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SKETCHES 



BY 




CURIO. 



LONDON: 

BOSWORTH & HARRISON, 215 REGENT STREET. 

1856. 



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LONDON : 

Printed by G. Barclay, Castle St. Leicester Sq. 



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CONTENTS. 



THE NEWSPAPER . 








Page 
1 


THE LITEEAEY BORE 








4 


THE CODGER 








9 


THE INJURED INDIVIDUAL 








14 


THE WISEACRE 








21 


THE HUMBUG 








24 


THE GREAT AUCTIONEER 








30 


MANNERISM 








45 


THE DISAPPOINTED MAN 








55 


THE SANGUINE MAN 








62 


THE CAUTIOUS MAN 








67 


THE GENTEEL MAN 








73 


THE DANDY ^ . 








. 77 


THE BLIND FIDDLER . 








79 


FALSE ESTIMATES 








87 


SENSIBILITY 








96 


LIVELINESS 








. 105 



IV 



CONTENTS. 



ENTHUSIASM 

DISAGEEEABLE PEOPLE 

job's COMFOETERS 

PAETICULAE PEOPLE 

THE WIGGINS 'S MUSICAL PAETY 

OSTENTATION . . 

CONCEITED PEOPLE 

THE LOED MAYOE's DINNEE . 



109 
114 
123 
128 
131 
152 
155 
161 



SKETCHES. 



THE NEWSPAPER. 

Delineate who can (Lord Ogilby himself need not 
spurn the office) the great luxury of a Newspaper at 
the breakfast-table, moist and steaming from the 
press, — 'the concomitant mental repast, served not 
in entrees^ but in bulk, and redeeming even the vul- 
garism of " buttered rolls in the middle of July." 

Yet has it its alloys. Of which, is it not one to 
detect in the theatrical advertisements an apology 
for the non-appearance that evening of a favourite 
actor, or substitution in the programme of an old 
for the new play in consequence of unforeseen circum- 
stances, — you having secured a box or " places," and 
effected other needful arrangements to witness such 
performance, in company with your cousins from the 



2 THE NEWSPAPER. 

Land's End, whose sojourn with you terminates to-mor- 
row ? Or, to learn from the Gazette the insolvency of 
a friend whom you had recently accommodated with a 
loan, to be repaid punctually in three months ? Or, 
from the list of fashionable movements, the sudden 
exit for the Continent of the identical grandee, before 
whom, for a consideration, you were about to pro- 
strate yourself in the sanguine attitude of a suitor ? 
Or, to read in the police columns the exposure of a near 
relative for assaults upon door-knockers, bell-handles, 
mendicants, and cripples, or for other youthful inco- 
herencies, and finally setting at nought the nocturnal 
authorities in accents too forcible to be endured or 
quoted, even to " his worship ? " Or, in the law report, 
that another and respected kinsman had been called 
to figure in a witness-box, and there, overawed by 
the novelty of his situation, and the suavity of his 
learned inquisitor, had committed himself by a lapsus 
that had caused a titter through the court, and 
amus'ed even his Ludship ? Or, to find in the 
'^ literary" column a review of the new work for 
whose success you felt a ^' slight interest," replete 
with sarcasm and contempt for the author's powers 
and presumption, couched in all the pungency of 
expression, which, though equally available on either 
side of a question, nevertheless does either w,ay influ- 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



ence the judgment of the most courteous reader ? Or, 
on referring to a leading article, from which you 
thirst for enlightenment on the all-important sub- 
ject, to find assertion in place of argument, and in 
lieu of the threatened dissection, or an attempted 
one, of the fallacies of an opponent, only a vilification 
of person or persons unknown and by you uncared 
for, from whom the fallacies may have emanated? 
Or, from the births, &c., to gather that your esteemed 
but unprosperous friend who perpetrated a love- 
match in his zenith of youthful intrepidity has been 
presented with another reinforcement to his hungry 
battalion? It is not always with equanimity that 
we con the marriages Q' another star gone out !") — 
But, worst of all, is the furtive glance at the daily 
list of departures from this mortal scene, in which 
occasionally we recognise a familiar name. 



THE LITERAKY BORE. 



THE LITERARY BORE. 

The poor relation who persists in the practice of 
dropping in without notice may be evaded. So may 
the leisurely dog over the moors, who, when asked 
to come and spend a long day, has the conscience to 
arrive with his fishing-tackle at your door before 
the servants are up or the watchman is off his beat. 
So may the astronomer, who decoys you into his 
garden on a sharp night to peep with him at the 
vault of heaven through a telescope woefully out of 
repair : a delicate chest or susceptibility to cold, if 
he have a heart in his bosom, shall be your ample 
apology for retreat. Even II Fanatico is not so 
bad : to an unmusical victim the trial may be pain- 
ful, but if you have any soul for harmony, the names 
of Handel, Beethoven, and Mozart, must have some 
attraction in your ears ; and if the expositor's initia- 
tion have been in the right school, depend on it he 
has something curious for you, outi^e as may appear 
his fashion of illustration. And there are the invul- 



THE LITERARY BORE. 5 

nerables, who force their acquaintance whether you 
would or no, who positively won't take a cut. And 
your morning visitor, who assures you he doesn't 
want any refreshment, and yet won't go. All these 
may be endured ; but the Literary Bore ! where is 
his counterpart? He brings no commentaries on 
the productions of the great departed : classic names 
prevail not with him: his theme is from his own 
poor muse. He is not to be put off with an indig- 
nity, for he has earned his right of consultation by 
frequent and liberal hospitality. He is not to be 
evaded, for he pounces on you in a tete-a-tete^ imme- 
diately after dinner, or when you are stretching your 
weary limbs upon his sofa, pat with his poem or 
tragedy, or part of a treatise he has written, to show 
something or other that exists in his imagination. 
You cannot make common cause and distribute him 
among your circle : he lays hold on you when no 
one's near to help, or share your sufferings ; he lies 
in ambush for you, and never precipitates his opera- 
tions until he is safe of his opportunity. He begins 
thus : " By the bye, a little thing I've been doing." 
You know what is coming ; he goes to his desk, 
turns quickly round to ask if he bores you ; you 
long to say * yes,' but have not the heart. The trifle 
is produced amidst a heap of papers huge enough for 



b THE LITERARY BORE. 

the elements of a new lexicon. He turns them about, 
alights on a passage which he begins mumbling to 
himself, reads aloud, but stops, breathless, from 
downright excitement, ^'No, it is not there." He 
thumbs the poor leaves again, controlling his emo- 
tions as he best can, launches anew, and gets through 
half-a-dozen lines or so without a break. But here 
you very naturally laugh, — which he sees ; you are 
alarmed. He asserts that he was prepared for your 
opposition on that point and in that stage of the 
argument : this relieves you. He proceeds ; but the 
humour of the spectacle and the idea of his mistaking 
your smile for a controversial one, tickle you again, 
which observing, he assures you, you are wrong, as 
you shall now see as he advances into the pith of the 
subject. You groan inwardly ; and so on to the end 
of his inexorable chapter. Is he poet ? Hear him 
steam through a section of genuine home-spun, 
breathing fierce disdains, gratuitous denials, and 
horrid confession as though the man were possessed. 
He is now to work upon your feelings : cadences of 
wire-wove imagery, chirpings of false joy, hiccups of 
tenderness, and undulations of pathos, flow from his 
quivering lips with parental yet rhetorical intensity. 
'AH this for Hecuba ! ' you cry to yourself, oppressed 
with the length of his rhapsody — which, however, he 



THE LITERARY BORE. 7 

now brings to a close, and from over-exertion is 
unable to sj^eak. He awaits your criticism : you 
hesitate ; lie implores you to be candid. The wliole 
torrent of his effusions has passed through your auri- 
cles, like gruel through a sieve, and you are dumb. 
How you congratulate yourself the next time he 
confronts you, that it is not under his roof, nor in 
the vicinity of his sanctum. Stay awhile, — his hind 
pocket looks bulky ; it carries six sheets of foolscap, 
instruments of torture, wherewith to reopen upon 
you at will ; or he sends you an MS. (as he calls it) 
for your perusal, when your first dream shall be of 
your tormentor, ere you are a tithe-part prepared for 
the interview, for you procrastinated the irksome 
duty, but are at length shamed into action by exam- 
ples from without and from within, and delicacy and 
benevolence conspire to make you an agreeable hypo- 
crite. Meet him in the Park, he has a pain, and 
must sit down among the hypochondriacs and nursery- 
maids — the Muse again ! Or walk home with him from 
the Conversazione, and though he pause not at every 
lamp-post to regale you with an Ode to Darkness or 
an Invocation to the Moon, yet he has a memory^ 
stocked for all occasions, from the which, you holding 
the umbrella, he pours his inarticulate numbers 
through the coils of his neck-wrapper, ' spouting as 



8 THE LITERARY BORE. 

he goes for want of thought. Oh, for the patience 
of a select circle that can make a pastime of mono- 
tony, or for the humility of Sir Benjamin Backbite, 
who, goaded for a copious taste of his quality, could 
limit himself to the modest complement of a stanza ! 
And why, too, persecute you in particular ? Alack ! 
he is no such exclusive : he spares none, or would 
not ; enemy or kinsman, near or distant friend, 
subaltern or debtor, all have had their turn ; he has 
no mercy : the furor almost knows no preferences. 
Audience he must have ; and in default of a worthier, 
he will befool Bottle-nose into a Maecenas, and treat 
him to an ore rotundo in the little parlour, with any- 
thing else he would like to mix with it. And there's 
the plastic barber (a critic too) makes of him a friend 
for life, thereby getting purchasers for his creams 
and cheap education for his children, all by the 
courteous tact of seeming interested, as he sits on 
his stool resuscitating the lustre of an old peruke, 
while the Literary Bore reads to him his chef-d^oeuvre. 



THE CODGER. 



THE CODGER. 

He is hard upon sixty — wears gaiters, and an un- 
fashionable costume altogether — ought to wear powder 
and a pig-tail — is neither tall nor short, but high- 
shouldered — has a good phrenological head — com- 
plexion drab^ — no whiskers — quick eyes — pug-nose — 
and a Punchinello mouth, concave from loss of teeth, 
but genial as Mr. Wilberforce's. He belongs to no 
club, but has his favoured haunts, where he can depend 
on his company, and knows he is not misinter- 
preted. He seldom dines out — to him synonymous 
with out of his element. He is a bachelor ; makes no 
noise in the world, nor in the parish, and submits to 
any penalty to exonerate himself from official respon- 
sibility. He never has a dispute, — a serious one, with 
anybody ; he can maintain his point, and prove all 
that he asserts, but he neither rushes in "where 
angels fear to tread," nor is he quite so formal a moral- 
ist as to " quarrel with a straw," though reputation were 
somewhat involved in the issue. He has his line of 



10 THE CODGER. 

politics — at least you know which newspaper to 
hand him when yon have reached two and he has the 
choice — but he does not penetrate the depths, or 
enter into the controversies ; he heeds the state of 
agriculture, and the tides, the births, &c., skims the 
" Omniana," evades the Police and the dismal suicides 
and accidents, goes through the Fashion if it is not 
too long, does not altogether neglect the commercial 
intelligence, once in a week may read a leading 
article through — and then he begins his dinner. 
Thrice happy, he never grumbles — and, if there were no 
other advantage in this peculiarity, it saves him time, 
and gets him his aliment while it's hot. He takes his 
quantum of " stout," refuses nothing from fear of 
consequences, falls then to his port, or his toddy, 
as the case may be. He wants no propitiation from 
without, no incitements beyond his native bonhommie^ 
to chime and harmonise, to listen or applaud ; and 
yet there's a rough-hewn caste and crudity, though 
tempered with courtesy, about the creature, which 
should scarcely heighten the charm of his eccentricity ; 
but he presents to your observant eye the spectacle 
of a codger J realizing all the pleasant fiction that 
author, actor, or^/ctor must each fail in delineating — 
that embodiment of quaint amenity, striking but un- 
affected, cheerful but sober, independent in charac- 



THE CODGER. 11 

ter, but catholic in spirit, intelligent but not factious, 
grotesque but respectable — the Codger ! If you 
don't look at him as a codger you will do him wrong, 
seeing nothing in him but a mere fogey — in all 
probability a grandfather, a cribbage-player, not im- 
possibly a teetotaler, a miller, or a wag — perhaps a 
cockney, an auctioneer — certainly not a schoolmaster, 
nor a clergyman, nor a sportsman. But, be apprised 
beforehand that he is a true and unfeigned Codger — 
seize the hint, grasp the idea, and " perpend." Watch 
him — he is the very incarnation of an ideal ; there is 
palpableness about him that transcends the impunity 
of fire-light and makes darkness visible like a rabbit 
on the wall. His head is grey, but cropt like Mun- 
go's. Friendly, gladsome chap — though, by the bye, 
he will chicane a bit when his right is in jeopardy for 
his favourite corner^ where either he must sit or not sit 
at all — his factitious domicile, his locus sigilliy^heTe no 
locu77i tenens were endurable, and where alone per- 
haps his soul palpitates within him. Here he " comes 
out," in his simplicity, and through disavowals, and 
coy deprecation, and mock assumptions of dignity, 
with some playful dogmatism, he entertains you, with 
a fluency which nothing, not deglutition, can impede, 
with that rarity in these days, the confessions of a 
genuine mind. Him you mai/ believe, and however 



12 THE CODGER. 

Mr. Buckram might turn the nose and mistake him 
for a butt, you may receive all that issues from his 
lips as so much truth — as far as sincerity can make 
it such — and therefore, if you be equal to your op- 
portunity, as so much wisdom, — for he tells how he 
can cry "fig" to a witch, how he concedes to im- 
perious conscience, how he's a stranger to excess (and 
therefore not a teetotaler), a fisher out and rewarder 
of merit, an avoider of vestries, and literary societies, 
and black silk stockings ; but shows also how he's 
an oddity and looks like a genius, and how he has 
survived the season of impetuosity, when, like you, he 
took oath, and aspired, and fell in love, and was 
therein somehow disappointed, and then Fate hooked 
him by the gullet, and he found himself at a new 
climacteric. But though decay has come upon him, 
he has fallen into a second bloom, and in exchange 
for the devil of the boy he rejoices in the benignity of 
the Codger. He has learned to restrain himself, to 
deny himself, to yield to the boisterous and give them 
rope enough, to quell opposites with negatives, to 
tolerate, — and all with honour, for he has smoked 
the devil's jerkin, and is not afraid of man. The fair 
know him scarcely but as the queer Mr. So-and-so, 
whom they have heard spoken of by the squire as a 
nondescript, by the parson (sad to say) as a non- 



THE CODGER. 13 

attendant, by the tradesman as a benefactor, and by 
the younger brother as a " Codger." He is never 
more than ceremonious in their company, and they 
have no certainty of seeing him but at an anniversary. 
We have no means of guessing what he does with 
himself all day. He must sleep well, and so nothing 
should well come amiss to him. We are not going 
to pry into this. But can he be always a Codger? At 
breakfast and in his study, or in his poultry-yard ? 
And how is he furthermore endowed ? Does he feel 
a musical truth? That he does. But, for the 
heroics — does Virtue recognise him here — does 
Slander rouse — does he writhe at injustice — can he 
weep with the seraphim — or does he " lack gall to 
make oppression bitter ? " And how does he feel at 
sight of an undertaker? — But, this is beside our 
graphic province ; we would not dissect him, nor 
trace him into such privacies, for fear of divesting 
our dear imaginary friend of what we proclaim as 
his seeming veritable characteristics — a perpetual 
sense of enjoyment — chaste but convivial — a chuck- 
ling glow, a blithe and garrulous honesty, a bound- 
less philanthropy, a whimsical modesty, — and, in 
fact, an individuality indescribable, and peculiar to 
none but The Codger. 



14 THE INJURED INDIVIDUAL. 



THE INJURED INDIVIDUAL. 

If ever a man had a right to be a fatalist, it is the 
" Injured Individual," *' If I had been bred a hat- 
ter," said one to us once, " I verily believe people 
would have been born without heads" — an extra- 
vagant hypothesis apparently, but not so irrational 
when we contemplate the man, and hear him recoimt 
his wondrous grievances ! We hear much about the 
equal distribution of happiness, of the virtual equality 
supposed to pervade the various conditions of life, of 
the inward satisfaction attendant upon virtuous ac- 
tion independently of its results, the pride of forti- 
tude, the supports of conscience in adversity, the 
elasticity of hope, and the mystical pleasures of 
poverty ; and, although we do not profess profundity 
enough to refute the doctrine that good and evil are 
fairly apportioned to all men, we confess to some 
misgivings upon the truth of it, and are inclined to 
think Justice is, after all, but a one-sided or an 
impotent arbitress of our earthly destinies. We 



THE INJURED INDIVIDUAL. 15 

insist that it is so in the case of the " Injured 
Individual." There is no compromise for hijn, — he 
casts his bread upon the waters, " and there an end" 
— a conspiracy of accidents is clearly demonstrable 
against /z2'??i— "blind chance" is not blind whenever 
his fate is in the issue, — and, let the philosopher of 
Massachusetts advance what he may upon the law of 
universal compensation, here at least is an exception, 
if but a solitary one, to the working of his theory. 
Who has not met the Injured Individual? — the 
man of many wrongs — the scapegoat of treachery — 
the victim of the designing, the ungrateful, and the 
vicious, — the friend mth legitimate long face and 
clouded brow, who comes to you ever with a new 
recital of his trials, and a fresh illustration from his 
own experience of the villany of mankind ? Gallantly 
has he performed his part ; exemplary the apti- 
tude and assiduity displayed in all the enterprises 
in which he has been engaged ; and yet, how the 
malice of man, and the decrees of unseen powers, 
have worked against him for evil ! Not few, but 
countless, are the proofs his autobiography unfolds of 
his predestinated martyrdom through this life, and 
the unconditional postponement of all his little en- 
joyments to the brighter ages of the life to come. 
A very target for Fortune to " shoot her bolts at" — 



16 THE INJURED INDIVIDUAL. 

his ill star ever glimmering upon him, like a dark 
lantern, to discover him to the malignant eye of his 
persecutors ! This is no exaggeration. And the 
man is no illusion. There is "the lucky dog," — 
and there is the " Injured Individual." The lottery 
of life has dealt him not only blanks, but forfeitures, 
pains, and penalties. Men and elements have com- 
bined against him. Frauds, disappointments, and 
the average ills of life are among the minor evils 
that have assailed him — Banlo-uptcies, and hur- 
ricanes, prosecutions, revolutions, and even earth- 
quakes, help to swell the catalogue of fell agencies 
that have wreaked destruction on his guiltless head, 
and before which, after long and fierce struggling, he 
now " 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire," and seek a 
refuge under the disconsolate title of " The Injured 
Individual." 

Reader, extend your sympathies to this man. But 
be not deceived as to his identity. Be sure he is the 
veritable character he pretends to be, and not one of 
the million counterfeits abroad, imposing upon the 
credulous, and assuming to themselves the title and 
privileges belonging only to the really Injured Indi- 
vidual. Be careful not to be seduced by the whinings 
of the Insatiable, who would grasp all^ and swear it 
is theirs, not in law only, but in equity — thirsty 



THE INJURED INDIVIDUAL. 17 

souls, whose quick sensibilities y^eZ the hard exaction 
of an act of benevolence " for the sake of appear- 
ances," and the unkindness of the needy, who impose 
on them the necessity of refusing under any circum- 
stances to transgress the limits which the forms of 
ostentatious charity prescribe — with whom the rights 
of property are a code of morals, and a claim upon 
their friendship a depredation, and an ^'injury!" 
Listen not, either, to the groans of the dilapidated 
idler, who never would follow advice, nor receive it, and 
has lived to verify in his own history the trite pre- 
dictions of nursery fables and the aphorisms of his 
writing-master touching the rewards of industry and 
the fruits of disobedience. Truth is seldom welcome 
where it condemns, and few men can bear the idea of 
having "injured" themselves^ even by a lapsus or a 
venial indiscretion. Those notorious for having been 
" their own enemies " are apt to be imaginative on 
the subject of their grievances, and can relate, many 
of them, some heart-rending " injuries " which they 
have sustained through the operation of the common 
course of nature — very desperadoes^ when sympathy 
is denied them. They proclaim themselves Injured 
Individuals ! Nothing requires more patience to 
bear, or philosophy to profit by, than the process of 
expiation. Consequences are incurred without a 

c 



18 THE INJURED INDIVIDUAL. 

thouglit ; but to hear them often '-' drives the soul to 
madness." There is a sort of lunacy which makes 
people fancy themselves " injured individuals ; " like 
the man with the " turned head," the imagination 
fled to for consolation befools them into monomania. 
How many of the self-constituted " Injured Indi- 
viduals " must have passed through the Gazette ! 
What swarms must have recreated themselves in our 
prisons and houses of correction ! And, in the pro- 
fessions — how many startling geniuses, from being 
too proud to stoop, too vulgar to please, or too indo- 
lent to work, become ridiculous for their presump- 
tion, or wound themselves with the sword they are 
not skilled enough to wield against a foe, — and yet 
condole with themselves as " Injured Individuals." 
An ambitious man rushes into an uncongenial sphere, 
and is eclipsed by a more competent rival — he is 
thenceforward an Injured Individual. The flatterer, 
who entices with his fair words, when discovered to 
be a "humbug," and treated accordingly, can con- 
scientiously declare himself an Injured Individual ! 
Nay, even the very Bully, who chances upon a wrong 
customer, through defect of that astuteness in select- 
ing his victim which seldom does accompany brutality 
of mind, even he will dub himself an Injured Indi- 
vidual. Then there are those of the dashing school , 



THE INJURED INDIVIDUAL. 19 

who are bold enough to run the risk of dreadful 
retribution for the chance of brilliant gain, and who, 
if the cast be against them, cannot endure the con- 
ditions entailed, and " strike " as soon as they are 
" put to their purgation." They, too, can call them- 
selves Injured Individuals. The apple-woman in the 
street, who, scorning the admonitions of the police, 
invades the sanctity of the pave^ thereby " provoking 
Justice to break her basket " and scatter her provisions 
into the gutter, vows herself an Injured Individual ! 
The husband who neglects his wife, because " no 
man can serve two mistresses j'^ and is brought to 
atone for the dereliction by ignominy and disgrace, 
nominates himself an Injured Individual. The fool- 
hardy combatant, who will fight single-handed de- 
spite the entreaties of friends who know his weak- 
ness and the strength of his antagonist, and then 
gets worsted at a blow, has the poor consolation of 
fancying himself an Injured Individual. The sen- 
sualist, in the agonies of dyspepsia, pities himself 
into a frenzy and ''jumps the life to come" out of 
his bed-room window — when his own testimony is 
not wanting to identify him, in one sense at least, as 
an Injured Individual. These and many others, such 
as the usurer who meets with losses, the gambler 
who " snaps his tether," the " crab " repudiated for 



20 THE INJURED INDIVIDUAL. 

his acerbities, the ruffian expatriated to save his life, 
the spendthrift embarrassed, the aggressor repelled, 
the cheat exposed, the proser coughed down, the 
trickster entrapped, the coward degraded — all are in 
turns arrogators of the merit and immunities con- 
tended for in behalf of the Injured Indiyidual. In 
fine, for the protection of our client, the real Injured 
Individual, and of his benefactors the public at large, 
we may assert that most of the fraternity who give 
themselves out for Injured Individuals are generally 
such as, directly by word or deed, or indirectly by 
example, are most open to the charge of doing 
injury to others. They are damaged, but not Injured, 
Individuals, 



THE WISEACRE. 21 



THE WISEACEE. 

If there is a happy man under the sun, it is the 
Wiseacre. Endowed by nature with that "mobility" 
which, though he be hard to satisfy, renders all things 
for him proportionately interesting and equally acces- 
sible, his range is so wide, there is scarcely a subject 
you can mention on which he will confess entire 
ignorance. He may betray it, but not purposely. 
He seems to say, ' Have done with your repetitions — 
principles and details, doctrines and histories, art 
and science, truth and falsehood, microcosm and 
macrocosm, all are familiar to Aim, but he has had so 
much of it ; ' — and if the discussion must proceed, he 
cares only to listen, just setting you right now and 
then on a point too small to embroil him in the argu- 
ment, to which he is sadly unequal. Presume not to 
moralize, or rhapsodize, or any way extemporize, 
for his edification — he has considered it all, and dis- 
missed it from his mind, and your very profoundest 
or most eloquent emanations he greets with the pish ! 



22 THE WISEACRE. 

peculiar to the Wiseacre. He is never surprised ! 
Crack of doom, nor of ^' chesnut in a farmer's fire,'* 
can startle Mm. Where simplicity traces only itself, 
or a dispensation of providence, he, gifted ! recog- 
nises a phase of mystery, a link of an invisible chain, 
or the truth of secret divination. Charge him not 
with impenetrability, — he will tell you 'tis the test 
of a philosopher never to be astonished at anything. 
And, in his self-reliance, what a vantage-ground has 
he ! Disdaining the prescription of humility as an 
early lesson of wisdom, his method was to over- 
estimate himself, and from that elevation in a man- 
ner look disparagingly upon all things. He has a 
tutelary air, but imperious, and is scarcely to be 
bribed into an act of real condescension ; even flattery 
he tries to regard only as another's opinion of him, 
and he has no faith but in his own. The only thing 
he receives not invidiously is facts. He is no hypo- 
crite — he believes himself all he would pass for. 
Though an acknowledged deceiver, he is an innocent 
one, for himself is his chiefest dupe ; a man, surely, 
that can brook derision all his life, and ^^ still go on," 
must have the purity TuS well as the boldness of a 
martyr ; and, with the exception of a lurking curiosity 
to see the Thames on fire, the average taint of mischief 
is more than can fairly be laid to the account of 



THE WISEACRE. 23 

*' the Wiseacre." His habits are unimpeachable. 
Did he gamble, he would probably back his opinions 
with tremendous odds. But he does not. In politics 
he may be " anything." He is great at a crisis, and 
probably could give valuable hints in high quarters 
at the present juncture, were it worth his while ; but, 
as we said, it is not easy to draw him out, unless, as 
is sometimes the case, he be a "hero-worshipper," 
when, his political principle smacking more of a prin- 
ciple of fealty than a fidelity to principle, he sees his 
way clearer, and can defend the god of his idolatry 
from the aspersions of a " wag " with considerable 
sharpness. Yet he has his little abstractions, 
wherein, apart from such influences, he will hack at 
a truth or work a crotchet by the square ; and has 
been suspected of originality, — as when, for instance, 
he took the hint of widening a street from the falling 
of a tile upon the flags, — or, upon a higher scale, of 
promoting virtue, upon the homoeopathy system, by 
the encouragement of vice. And, indeed, he has 
many anecdotes of his exploits of sagacity, still more 
striking, though unfortunately achieved under cir- 
cumstances which preclude any authentication of 
them less partial than his own. 



24 THE HUMBUG. 



THE HUMBUG. 

The Humbug is a pettifogging compound of infidel, 
coward, and good fellow ; more or less of either, as 
the case may be ; but these are the components of 
the character. The title embraces a catalogue of 
delinquents, of all professions, not cognisable by the 
law of the land, — and a host of trivial philanthropists, 
that victimize their fellow-creatures, without intend- 
ing them the slightest harm. There is the designing 
humbug, and the sanguine ; the one, a violator of the 
spirit, but a respecter of the letter, of the social law ; 
the other, a good-natured being, with a warm heart 
and no conscience, all impulse and no principle, with- 
out steadiness of judgment or of purpose, opinions, 
legitimate aims, or springs of action. Your genuine 
humbug is the mean character between these two, 
partaking of the venality of the one, and the imbeci- 
lity of the other, a patchwork of guilt and innocence, 
a moral scarecrow — worth sketching for the benefit 
of the unwary. 



THE HUMBUG. 25 

He can adapt himself to any company — from a 
saint to a bailiff, an alderman to a teetotaller, a 
monk to a prig, a debtor to a creditor. With the 
saint he touches not npon spiritual matters, but 
softens his heart with a flattering unction, or one of 
his most ineffable bows ; the bailiff he subdues with 
an air of sensitive dignity, which Cerebus himself 
could hardly withstand ; the alderman he can beguile 
with pleasant prattle, through the successive courses 
of a luxurious banquet — and when that strain of har- 
mony, " Non Nobis Domine," has announced that the 
company have, one and all, gratified themselves to 
their appetites' content, he in his turn can listen 
with greedy ear to his worship's effusions of humour- 
some and magisterial wisdom ; with the teetotaller he 
can inveigh with the emphasis of a fury against the 
liberal use of the article spirits^ and the noun intem- 
2')erance; the solitaire he heartens with ejaculations 
of admiration and envy at his conquest over sense; 
and the " prig " is allowed to be familiar, and vent 
his small " saws," show his enamel, and cock his 
head, upon the simple condition of his paying the 
reckoning ; the debtor he can frighten with an air of 
alarming firmness ; and with the creditor, need we 
say, he invariably gains his point? His first im- 
pressions on a stranger are always favourable — dis- 



26 THE HUMBUG. 

ciplined in his manners, he is enabled, by the assiduity 
of self-interest, and the geniality of his better nature, 
to gain the ear, and, through that best of thorough- 
fares to reach the heart, and thence the pocket of a 
patron ; and although he should not long maintain 
his ground, his shameless flexibility of mind never 
forsakes him, — down and up again, nil desperandum 
is his motto, unsteadiness takes the name of buoy- 
ancy, vanity is gratified where prudence should be 
shocked, his wits are sharpened for the next encounter, 
and the excitement of novelty is his ample substitute 
for the credit of success. 

If the humbug were not, as he is, a bettermost 
scamp, he might make a serviceable member of 
society ; and, but for his redeeming points, he would 
be a villain. As it is, he scruples not to desecrate 
the name of honour, and practise his wiles under the 
sacred pretext of friendship, — here he is an infidel ; 
sensibility makes him a coward, hence he is a 
" humbug." He has not the boldness to disparage 
you to your face, — like a good fellow, he spares your 
feelings in your presence, and contents himself, 
when your back is turned, with an assault on your 
reputation. His actions and motives are mostly at 
variance, but both are changeful as the wind ; good 
and bad chasing each other, if not mingling together, 



THE HUMBUG. 27 

"svith rapid alternation ; weeper and cock-fighter ; 
sympathiser and tyrant ; flatterer and detractor ; 
nice companion and rancorous foe ; a bad son if he 
has no patrimony, but a good father — for he aspires 
to found a name. 

He raises expectations which he knows, rather than 
feels, will not be realized. Go and ask a favour of 
him, and, though he cannot immediately comply, he 
will not damp you with a point-blank denial. He 
would like to do it, and can't ; but the credit of good- 
will towards you does not satisfy him, without the 
reputation also of ability to serve you ; so he defers 
it, and keeps you hanging on his hook, sick at heart, 
and tortured with suspense, for his own present plea- 
sure, and your imaginary profit. He leads you on 
by inuendo, exaggeration, and falsehood, involving 
you at every delay deeper into the mire of impending 
disappointment. He gladdens you to-day at the 
expense of your peace to-morrow and the six days, at 
least, that follow. He promises with a sincere wish, 
and perhaps some intention, to benefit you ; but the 
wish survives the intention, and is itself lost in his 
blazing incapacity to keep his word. Hence he is 
stigmatized as a treacherous friend, as hollow as a 
drum, a summer bird — a humbug ! Fearing no 
God, he fibs ad libitum^ where he can do it with im- 



28 THE HUMBUG. 

punity ; and, you may observe, his most interesting 
adventures are always related to have transpired 
under circumstances which leave investigation useless 
a-nd disproof impossible. Of a fact^ advanced by the 
humbug, if it be at all of a startling nature, you 
may set down half, at least, as misrepresentation, if 
not the whole as fiction. He may well be an adept, 
for he serves an apprenticeship to the art of indiscri- 
minate gulling. Does he not tell you how he read 
three volumes at a sitting, and forgot to wind up his 
watch ? or how he was awake with the sun after *^ a 
rouse " by moonlight, and, Avithout the sedative of a 
wet napkin on his head, tackled to something parti- 
cularly profound for four or five consecutive hours, 
and intends to do the same every day, whatever the 
sun may do, for four or five consecutive months yet to 
follow? how he gave a setting down to a professed 
wit, sophist, or mountebank, now dead and gone, in 
the presence of one witness, also dead and gone ! 
Or, coming upon the stage of life, does he not give 
out that he has large expectations from his father, 
knowing that, as this is a delicate matter, no in- 
quiries can be made till the old gentleman dies, and 
then, if the truth come out, he can fall back on the 
touching plea of disappointment ! and furthermore, 
how he for love, and not for money, conducted a knotty 



THE HUMBUG. 29 

business through a labyrinth of complexity, and, 
when the beneficiaire had relinquished all hoj)e of 
elucidation, brought it to a happy termination ! What 
deeds of wonder he has performed by the force of 
constitutional facility, — how events have verified his 
intuitive predictions, — and how great authorities 
have come round to his views at the instigation of a 
greater, with whom he had been admitted to long 
and frequent conferences without prejudice to the 
Court Circular ? Only mention the name of a dis- 
tinguished individual, and he has no hesitation in 
telling you he knows him intimately, although he is 
not prepared to describe his person. Is '^ the black 
ox" on his hoof — is he down in the world? he pleads 
poverty to extenuate delinquency, and anything but 
truth in excuse for his poverty, ventures on the deep 
sea of shifts and contrivances, keeps his head above 
water without showing his face — a graduate for 
limbo — till he drifts upon a quicksand, or till he 
comes to be forti/j and after that he is seldom to be 
traced, unless, as will sometimes happen, capricious 
Fortune cast the sheep's eye at him, and make him 
a "gentleman," when he marries a nondescript, and 
helps to people the isle with a race of hereditary 
Humbugs. 



30 THE GREAT AUCTIONEER. 



THE GEEAT AUCTIONEEE. 

There are few places of public resort affording the 
gratuitous aids to reflection of which an idler is at 
liberty to avail himself at an Auction-mart. Whe- 
ther at a scene of quiet entertainment or an empo- 
rium for the superabundant utilities of life, as a rest- 
ing-place where nothing better offers for the jaded 
lounger, or as " a centre of busy interests " for those 
who want to buy and those who want to sell, its at- 
tractions are of that multifarious character that I 
hardly know how an observer, indisposed for more 
serious occupation, can while away a spare hour to 
better advantage than by taking the range of these 
property-changers' rooms about three o'clock in the 
afternoon, when the attendance is good, and the 
hammers are all in full play. Candidates of all de- 
grees, from the connoisseur in nicknacks to the ex- 
pectant representative of a county, spectators with 
empty looks and empty pockets, who, were passports 
demanded at the door, could urge, some ennui^ some 



THE GREAT AUCTIONEER. 31 

curiosity, as their only title to admission, and languid 
invalid-looking gentlemen, some in good clothes and 
some almost in tatters, are here thrown in promis- 
cuous congregation together. As a physiognomist, 
where could he desire more genuine or more varied 
materials for speculation ? And here, too, may he 
philosophise on the acquisitive propensities of human- 
ity, tracing among the coimtless springs from which 
flow the joys of possession, the estimation of a bau- 
ble enhanced by the deterioration of age, the glitter 
of novelty supplanted by the charm of antiquity, the 
ambition of display, the strange passion for the 
unique, the electric spell of a bargain, and the wanton 
sport of competing with a rival bidder ; and then 
heave a sigh for the transitory nature of those joys, 
and the precarious tenure by which the comely and 
costly things of this life are held, even by those who 
can afford to give the topmost price for them ! 

But, apart from the general seductions of the place, 
there is something engaging in the forms and func- 
tions appertaining to the ministerial character of the 
auctioneer himself; there is an idiosyncracy in the 
man, discriminating him from the " lay humanities " 
around him, investing him with an aspect invitatory 
of criticism, though not, as with other dignitaries, 
inspiring the reverence which lays criticism under 



32 THE GREAT AUCTIONEER. 

restraint, conspicuous without being commanding — 
privileged, autlioritatiye, oracular, and yet after all a 
familiar creature and only an auctioneer^ — whicli pre- 
eminently distinguislies this* class of practitioners 
from all others, and strikingly impresses them with 
the stamp of indiyiduality. May I be permitted to 
suggest that to the fraternity of auctioneers the full 
meed of justice has not been rendered by the world ? 
We read of celebrated statesmen, and warriors, eccen- 
tric physicians, inimitable barristers and actors, as- 
tounding financiers, inspired poets, and still more 
inspired preachers, and have been made to learn from 
authentic sources the peculiarities of their genius, the 
practical arts that assisted its display, and the whole 
history of their lives and conversation, — but we have 
no gallery of Auctioneers. On the score of pecuniary 
encouragement they have no cause to murmur, but 
renown and posthumous honour is cruelly denied 
them ; they may be favourites of fortune, but to fame, 
in the exalted acceptation of the word, they are but 
heirs and strangers. For when does the obituary 
ever record in more than formal phraseology, the 
lamented departure from the scene of his triumphs 
of Mr. So-and-so, " the celebrated auctioneer ? " 
What poesy was ever penned in commemoration of 
his defunct virtues of handsomer dimensions than 



THE GREAT AUCTIOXEER. 33 

those of a common epitaph ? The gossip of the tapis 
never admits him to the honom^ of a rumour, or even 
of a libel, — so that, despite his many and mideniable 
accomplishments, he must, under the usages against 
which in his behalf I would fain remonstrate, be con- 
tent to marry, sin, and die in comj^arative obscmity, 
for his greatness is limited to the circle of his craft, 
and the four walls of the auction-room. 

But there are exceptions to every rule. At the 
head of the list of auctioneers of the present day 
stands a gentleman of such high endowments and 
unquestionable superiority in his Yocation, that I 
hardly dare presume to attempt his portraiture. He 
is a grand remove above the general caste of his 
order. In his person is concentred all the aristocracy 
of his calling. He is in the Auction-mart what 
Eothschild used to be on 'Change, or what Daniel 
Lambert would have been at Guildhall had he been 
a member of the City Corporation, a triton among 
the minnows, a perfect leviathan, or, as the geolo- 
gists would have it, a perfect iguanodon ; he stands 
alone — not only in the box, but in the eye of the 
world, and of his pigmy brethren of the hammer. 
The appearance of this gentleman in public is 
heralded by the advertisement for several successive 
days in the principal newspapers of a programme of 



34 THE GREAT AUCTIONEER. 

his approaching sales, which presents as fair a speci- 
men as pen could supply of the plausive and alluring 
powers, by the exercise of which his great professional 
eminence had been achieved. These effusions are 
unlike anything which ancient or modern literature 
affords, or rather, they combine the perfections of 
both, and in the mixture of perspicuity, luxuriance, 
and refinement, which pervade them, as compositions 
they may be said to be without a parallel. He has 
the happy faculty of investing a genteel residence 
with supernatural enchantments, and of transporting 
his readers, all in the way of business, into the 
regions of fairy-land where splendour and beauty 
strive for the mastery. And he does it without 
drawing on invention for a fact, or presuming to 
enter one item in his catalogue, which an inspection 
of the estate does not fully justify. His efforts are 
wrought by the sheer art of colouring. Where an 
ordinary auctioneer would give a description of a site, 
he will give a history of a site, and garnish it with a 
train of pleasing and romantic associations. He 
exhausts the pictorial beauties of his scene, and 
" then imagines new." The vegetable world he 
endues with spirituality, and will give the ivy credit 
for ingenuity, as well as devotion to the domain that 
cherishes it, in the grace and order with which it 



THE GREAT AUCTIONEER. 35 

entwines itself around the walls. Rocks he inspires 
with symmetry, and embryo ehalybeates are incu- 
bated by his magic touch. Pomp and retirement are 
ofifered in equal perfection ; here the tournaments of 
ancient days might be transcended, and yet Zim- 
merman have found inspiration for his muse. The 
thought that suggests itself to the mind on perusing 
these things is, how can the man knock down so 
many paradises ! Is he a destroying angel in dis- 
guise? Or is it "Cain's jawbone" he wieldeth in 
his left hand, miscalling it a hammer ? 

On the day appointed, and within fire or ten 
minutes after the hour fixed for business, he is 
announced by the ringing of a bell, and a cluster of 
eager-looking persons in the lobby are seen wending 
towards the auction-room, headed by a tall hale- 
looking man, about sixty years of age, walking as 
though he were rather stiff in the joints, holding 
some papers in his hand, and talking (without look- 
ing at any one as he moves) in a loud nasal tone and 
peremptory manner. He ascends the rostrum, and 
takes his seat, where he is seen more at leisure. On 
the occasion when I had the pleasure of seeing him, 
he was dressed in a pea-green frock-coat and velvet- 
collar, white trousers and shoes, a buff waistcoat, 
and a bright-blue stock, surmounted by an ample 



36 THE GREAT AUCTIONEER. 

pair of gills, and a physiognomy to whicli only M. 
Claudet, when the sun, as the auctioneer is fond of 
saying, " is pleased to shine upon us," could do full 
justice, — a bald head, ^ bordered with a modicum of 
white hair, a forehead of ample development, a rough 
weather-beaten complexion, lower features which come 
under the denomination of " ordinary," and a pair of 
dark, destructive-looking eyes, quick in motion and 
various in expression, by nature wrathful, often watch- 
ful, playful if need be, and where the interests of his 
principal demand it, sparkling with merriment and 
fun. He looks a compound of the sportsman, the 
comedian, and the sea-captain, possessing consider- 
able patronage, and of an iron constitution. A glass 
of water is brought up and placed beside him, slightly 
coloured. He arranges his papers, and, rubbing his 
glasses, surveys his auditory, recognising here one 
and there one, and honouring each with a gentle 
inflection of the head, and a slight contraction of the 
eye by no means amounting to a smile — unless 
where he recognises a capitalist or a distinguished 
intime, when, sportive as a kitten, genial as mine 
host of the tavern, and yet with something of caus- 
ticity in his humour, he cries to him to " come into 
court, you sir, and not be screening yourself that 
way from public observation," leaving no escape for 



THE GREAT AUCTIONEER. 37 

the capitalist, who obeys the injunction and advances 
within whisper-shot of his tutelary friend, for there's 
more between them than meets the cursory ear, and 
the capitalist is not one of the loungers. He then, 
still seated, calls upon the clerk to read the " con- 
ditions of sale," apologizing in a bluff tone for the 
tediousness of that ceremony, which he owns to be 
" flat and unprofitable," asseverating viva voce^ that 
if ever lines ivere applicable^ those lines of the great 
bard were applicable to the reading of " conditions 
of sale ; " but to which, however, he patiently listens, 
with his eye-glasses over his nose, and a copy of the 
"unprofitable" document lying "flat" before him. 
Interruptions now begin to arise. Gentlemen with 
ready money will ask questions. It is of no avail 
for the auctioneer to tell them that the title is 
unquestioned, that the Lord Chancellor has con- 
firmed its validity in a court of equity, and that 
so far as that point goes one might make oneself 
happy about it, and without more ado go home and 
sleep and 

" end the heart-ache, 
And the thousand natural cares that flesh is heir to," — 

he " must be satisfied," and catechises the advocate 
accordingly, — the catechumen looks condescension, 
and meets his inquiries with promptitude and effect. 



38 THE GREAT AUCTIONEER. 

I understand there are few that venture to ask 
questions of this gentleman who ever take much by 
their motion ; for if they elicit, as they often do, 
information favourable to the seller, so much the 
better for Jiim ; and if the colloquy have the opposite 
tendency, such is his ready versatility, that he can 
anticipate a thrust with the needle's point, or chaff* 
his adversary into hopeless silence. 

He now stands up, and commences his exordium. 
This is surpassing. The beauties of nature are here 
eclipsed by the flowers of eloquence, and the figures 
of rhetoric cast into the shade by the nameless air 
with which he utters his eulogium on the house and 
grounds about to be knocked down to the highest 
bidder. I had been attracted to the scene by a peru- 
sal of his printed lucubrations, and now, in the pre- 
sence of the master-spirit from which they had 
emanated, felt thankful that the property was so far 
beyond my poor means of investment as to leave me 
nothing to fear from the wiles of the arch-tempter 
before me. In his oral address he rejects all for- 
malities of diction, throws aside the constraint of 
continuity, and speaks with a racy energy truly irre- 
sistible. He unites the acumen of the pleader, the 
esprit of the wit, and the fascination of the impro- 
visatore, — makes his hits and points like a great 



THE GREAT AUCTIONEER. 39 

actor, and works them up with the aid of his potent 
physiognomy, his equally potent action, and his 
hammer. He states the valuation, and contends 
that it is too low, — and dilates upon the brightening 
prospects of agriculture, and of the blessed effects of 
Sir Robert PeePs new measure, the merits of which 
he declines discussing at length, but contents him- 
self with simply predicting, upon his honour as a 
gentleman, that it must work incalculable good for 
the interests of all classes, and consequently of every 
class in particular. Upon his descending more into 
detail, I was struck by the felicity with which he 
dwelt on the exquisite adaptation of the land then 
under sale for the purpose of fattening bullocks. He 
was remarkably impressive here. There was a depth 
of conviction, a force, and a meaning in his enun- 
ciation of his belief in the land's capacity to fatten 
bullocks, which showed how completely he had 
thrown himself into his case ; and the man must 
have been none other than a habitual sceptic who 
could have sat and heard those words from his lips, 
and have harboured even a lurking doubt that bul- 
locks of any extraction, or of whatever previous 
habits of indulgence, both could, and were the choice 
given them would, have gorged themselves to reple- 
tion on the nutritious pasture in praise of which he 



40 THE GREAT AUCTIONEER. 

made this powerful appeal. The bidding is at its 
height, and he throws in a little episode about the 
chalybeate, which ^' only wanted encouragement, and 
Harrogate and Leamington would have to hide their 
diminished heads^ He takes a sip of the coloured 
water. A meek man in the centre begs to know why 
the timber was not mentioned in the catalogue ? The 
auctioneer affects incredulity, but finds, on inspection, 
that the important article in question had been 
omitted. He makes the acknowledgment ; but, 
instead of apologising for the oversight, retaliates 
upon the inquisitor for his presumption, by telling 
him plainly he is now expected, without equivocation, 
to become the purchaser. The auction advances, 
and with every new offer he finds fresh matter for 
dissertation. He alludes to the contiguity of the 
railroad, and comments with infinite force upon the 
luxury of coming up to town a distance of a hundred 
miles and going home to an eight-o'clock dinner 
every day, which our poor forefathers could never 
have believed to be possible ; and although this topic 
of wonderment, and the concomitant sneer at the 
past generation for only discovering principles of 
science and leaving to posterity the superior credit of 
their application, is somewhat threadbare, in his 
hands it loses all its monotony, and positively smacks 



THE GREAT AUCTIONEER. 41 

of originality. In proclaiming, also, the proximity 
of a churcli, he prettily confesses his faith in the 
utility of churches in general, the conyenience of hav- 
ing them near one's residence, and the value of a 
religious reputation in the long run to respectable 
members of society. He half promises a seat in 
Parliament at the small expense of a princely hospi- 
tality; and on the same terms wholly promises the 
acquaintance of the solicitor of the place, who happens 
to be then at his elbow, and on whose heart, integrity, 
and cellar, he pronounces an encomium that might 
have suffused with blushes any other cheeks than 
those of a solicitor. There is a pause, — and he pre- 
tends to bring the affair to a close, " Going — going" 
— his left hand rising as he bends downwards till 
his chin almost touches the '^ conditions of sale," lips 
clenched and eyebrows expanded as at the verge of 
an impending crisis. A modest-looking gentleman 
enters, and all eyes are turned upon him by a cry 
from the auctioneer, that if he wants a seat in Par- 
liament, now is his time. '' Do you guarantee the 
seat ? " dryly interrogates a wag, noways interested in 
the sale. '' Certainly, sir," is the reply, " if 2/ou will 
condescend to buy the estate. To he or not to he? 
as one of our great poets has said — " " — Gay, in 
' The Beggar's Opera,' " again interpolates the daring 



42 THE GREAT AUCTIONEER. 

wag, ambitious of fairly measuring wits with so dis- 
tinguished a humorist. A burst of laughter gives 
the auctioneer breathing-time for adducing the name 
of his author, and he then turns upon his victim with 
a volley of merciless raillery, which annihilates his 
courage and his fancy at a blow. Other interruptions 
occur, which he encounters with the same bold front 
as before, and adding that nothing pleases him more 
than to be asked questions, as he knows they are 
always the prelude to a fresh bid. He traverses his 
ground again, and sums up with a declaration that 
the spot defies description — that it is fit for a little 
emperor — that there is a richness and a grandeur, 
together with a quietude and a repose about it, which 
in all his experience, which had been considerable, he 
had never seen equalled — that if it lfia8 a fault, it is 
that an expenditure of money in improvements on 
the little paradise were an utter impossibility ; and 
in fine, that his Grace the Duke of Wellington 
himself might be proud to make the place his 
residence. 

Gifted and incomparable disposer of lands, tene- 
ments, and hereditaments ! Under sway of thy om- 
nipotent art are the very senses quickened, the fancy 
warmed, and the credulity of the most obdurate 
bidder invoked, as by the spirit of a sorcerer. Thy 



THE GREAT AUCTIONEER. 43 

extemporaneous rhetoric is not strained : like the 
quality of Mercy, it is twice blessed, " it blesses him 
that sells and him that huys^'' — 

*' It is mightiest in the mightiest, 
And becomes the Great Auctioneer 
Even better than his advertisements l^* 

It is now time to close : it is clear, from the coun- 
tenances in his immediate vicinity, that the highest 
expectations have been realised : all are satisfied, the 
property is appreciated, and the auctioneer threatens 
to knock it down. He gives warning, that in one 
moment, in one solitary moment, the sacrifice must 
be made. He places his hammer to his heart, and 
vows he feels that he is making a sacrifice. It annoys 
him — he declares it annoys him, and his face assumes 
the look of a man stung by a musquito. This most 
matchless thing of the kind — a place fit for a little 
emperor — and a house that will last till the end of 
the world, to be given away ! — "it offends him to the 
soul." As he gets pathetic, the nasal twang is more 
palpable. He is now trying the chance of an exti'a 
hundred. He says that, as it is the doom of man 
sometimes to be disappointed, so has he often in the 
course of his " long experience" felt the pangs of 
regret, but never to the extent to which he is agitated 



44 THE GREAT AUCTIONEER. 

now. He confesses at the full pitch of his lungs 
that " there is a reluctance in this arm to do its 
duty," — it upbraids him — it won't let him, — a 
smile steals through his tear — a titter commences 
— he reins up, becomes ferocious, indignant, dis- 
gusted ! roars " shame" upon the sacrilege, and then 
knocks the lot down with a polite bow to the pur- 
chaser, — and a draught of the coloured water is the 
climax. 



MANNERISM. 45 



MANNEEISM. 

This propensity argues a mental and moral weak- 
ness, an 'emulation after the mere semblance of merit 
at the expense of truth and good faith with the 
world. Through all degrees of society it may be 
traced — in palaces and boudoirs, clubs and coffee- 
houses, theatres, laboratories, and steam-boats ; and 
we dare believe the monastic circles are not free from 
its contagion. High or low, learned or illiterate, 
frivolous or profound — and would it were not so — 
sacred or profane, the vice has no choice of territory, 
nor local or sectarian partialities. Even in our 
cathedrals and churches, to say nothing of the con- 
venticle, how seldom do we hear the beautiful service 
read in a prayerful and natural way, from the pre- 
valence of conventional mannerism imbibed at the 
University, and when once acquired, retained with 
superstitious tenacity ! Pompous but insipid, pe- 
dantic and effeminate, tones and gestures, sadly mar 
the euphony and benign influence of these holy 



46 MANNERISM. 

exercises ; and the artificial spirit once engendered 
clings to the unwary practitioner, — for mannerism in 
the same individual affrights you again from the 
pulpit, to the destruction of the effects which un- 
alloyed eloquence and sound doctrine should produce 
on a congregation. It cannot be denied that men 
are to be seen, young ones more particularly, who 
ascend the rostrum with an inordinate straining after 
effect, perceptible in the air with which they prelude 
their brief orisons, and succeed them with an empha- 
tic survey of the passive scene around them, glowing 
internally, it may be feared, with an illicit sense of 
importance, or kind of egotistical sentimentality 
(which is beginning to be understood, though in 
these days of new coinage, no epithet has yet been 
assigned to it) ; sometimes with a not inexpressive 
eye riveted on a conjectural object which no one else 
can identify, and the whole countenance presenting 
an aspect of intense abstraction. Is it exaggeration 
to call this practical profanity? And yet the in- 
dividual referred to may be the first to mark such 
indecorums in a brother " labourer in the vineyard," 
and most severe in their condemnation ; for one of 
the many striking inconsistencies into which the 
human character is betrayed by egotism is the 
sagacity with which a person remarkable for any 



MANNERISM. 47 

particular foible, tliough comparatively unconscious 
of its egregious existence in himself, detects and 
reprobates the same weakness in his neighbour. 
This truth might be held in view by the speculatist 
upon the philosophy of social antipathies. 

In "the law too, what unfledged gravity, what 
counterfeit profundity ! The constrained coldness of 
the young aspirant after the caustic accomplishments 
of the pleader, inimical to the seasonable impulses 
of his age ! The placid smile at a statistical dis- 
cordancy, and his vacant stare as you interpolate the 
dull conference with a flash of humour ; the suavity 
of his lament at the trickery of an opponent, and the 
repulsion with which he hears from you ami:hing 
tender or pathetic ; are indeed of the flagrancies that 
" dizzy the arithmetic of memory." And then at 
the bar, what contorted visnomies among the brief- 
less ! biding their time, there they sit, instead of 
watching the proceedings, and culling practical les- 
sons from the book of observation open before them, 
apparently absorbed in some mystic lucubration, not 
unfrequently, perhaps, conjecturing what might not 
some chance visitors in the gallery — idle observers, 
or fair physiologists — think of them, embryos of 
future " celebrated contemporaries of the youthful 
Victoria," biographed for the pages of monthly 



48 MANNERISM. 

magazines by some hyperbolical note-taker, or in 
the more enduring form of a tbree-volnmed tale of 
metropolitan mysteries from the pen of a modem 
Evelina. 

In another sphere, the celebrated was a great 

man, remarkable alike for his financial capacity and 
the abandon (to use no harsher term) of his exterior, 
so that his physique might have struck the linkboy 
equally with the physiognomist. An abstracted look 
is intellectual ; but both hands pocketed, on the 
pave^ is a solecism either side of the Temple. Could 
not his lugubrious admirers emulate him in the 
higher walks of his eccentric genius, and soar after 
him into the region of his unutterable arithmetic ? 

The abounding zeal displayed by the shopkeeper 
in his calling, places his mannerism in the light of 
politeness. That Messrs. Tibbs and Bobbin do so 
conciliate and insinuate, in their own particular 
drawing-rooms, we cannot pretend to believe, — and 
so far their court manners are put on ; but they are 
so from no more venal intent than to propitiate an 
equitable share of your favours for the support of an 
increasing wife and family, which their less-deserv- 
ing rival across the way will otherwise monopolise ; 
and which laudable object therefore they attempt to 
compass, as the aforesaid competitor would do, by 



MANNERISM. 4^ 

an effort of irresistible j^oliteness — a quality never 
altogether to be impugned. Undoubtedly tlie pan- 
toniimic sua\4ties of the flexible retailer, and the 
eyer-sanguine pertinacity with which he tempts, and 
finally inveigles, his customers, and that wondrous 
endurance with which he waives his right to repel 
insinuations against the integrity of his craft and 
the goodness of his wares, have been often too much 
for our sobriety ; and the humour of the thing would 
be ample apology enough, even were those licensed 
decoyers by common consent condemned as a com- 
munity of impostors — a good-tempered rogue we 
never at heart entirely repudiate, but a whimsical 
or fantastical one has an inalienable claim ujDon us ; 
and such, from their profoundly artificial manners, 
we should account the retail fi'aternity, were they 
not, as they indubitably are, very "calendars" of 
what good men should be, late and early exemplars 
of virtuous industry. 

Upon the exculpatory list, however, let the actor 
have honourable precedence. He has a j)atent for 
mannerism. His art is cultivated out-of-doors, he 
cannot compose himself to study without the acces- 
sory of an '^ audience,'' save for the especial purposes 
which render task-work to him indispensable. Illu- 
sion is the " atmosphere of his soul ;" and no matter 

E 



50 MANNERISM. 

what range he pretends to, it must be scenic illusion, 
or he dies. It would hardly seem honourable to the 
modern Koscii, but it is nevertheless a fact, that the 
sublime on the stage is generally penurious-looking 
off it, and the histrionic underling an "expensive" 
in Pall Mall. This is enigmatical, to say the least 
of it, and might suggest to the frequenter of London 
masquerades the incongruities there exhibited, where 
Harry the Fifth may be seen cowering to a bully, 
Hotspur afraid of a pistol, Jaques and Hamlet tossing 
for the supper expenses, and Cato gallivanting with 
the ladies. 

It sits ill upon the nouveau riche, a man who, until 
now, sleeping or waking, had never dreamt of any 
thing but discharging his conscience and rendering 
just homage to his benefactor. No sooner, however, 
does he get the start of an unthrifty world than he 
*^ scorns the steps by which he did ascend," and un- 
gratefully disowns his identity with an assumption 
of the graces and affectations of the strange clique 
into which he has purchased admittance. He speaks 
of his recent marriage de convenance^ as a " quiet 
settling down," and begins to excuse himself at the 
convivial board for having, in compliance with the 
domestic code, to which he has recently engaged 
himself, learned to eat pudding and to drink tea 



MANNERISM. 51 

(both propensities mucli derided by bagmen), as 
though such comfortable vanities, to which in truth 
our hero had never been a stranger, required an 
apology. He cons, too, the slang of gentility, and 
comprehends under one generic title his " lady," 
footman, rival for the municipal gown. Majesty 
itself, the Premier and his own partner^ as " per- 
sons" veiy extraordinary or very uncouth, or very 
nice " persons." He was once a useful member of 
society, always ready with the helping hand on 
parochial emergencies, superintending schools, exer- 
cised a wholesome check upon vestry finances, and 
kept a collateral eye upon watchmen, pumps, and 
shutters. He has now withdrawn himself from this 
sphere of usefulness, and set up for a precieux. He 
invites you to dine, and begins with the soup to 
rhapsodise about Eookwood and Cerito (both in a 
breath), admires " Milton's Paradise Lost," but pre- 
fers " his Regain'd," and tortures you with many 
other such unseasonablenesses upon which he has 
newly lighted. Now, if this "person " would usher the 
assumption of his new character by turning the key 
of his cellar, and dining at two without stimulants, 
and engaging an evening tutor for a probationary two 
or three years or so, and thus, tempering the soil with 
elementary culture, some chance of success might be 



52 MANNEBISM. 

secured, and then he might sport his enamel to ad- 
vantage. But to plunge all at once, unannealed, 
from raw insignificance into the calorific atmosphere 
of comparative exquisitism, argues an indecorousness 
of spirit which might have shocked him when he wore 
an apron, and a temerity which angels might fear to 
emulate. 

How the young imitate the old ! distorting really 
comely appearances ; and the compliment is recipro- 
cated, — antique whipper-snappers with switches, and 
young codgers with ponderous walking-sticks — living 
anachronisms — flutter and waddle about town in 
paradoxical inversion. Stiff manners, white neckcloths 
of a morning, cloth boots, excessive rings, very re- 
markable hats in crown or brim, perukes, epicurism, 
much brandy taking, avoidance of sacred observances, 
unaccountable fits of taciturnity, and other such ano- 
malies in very young men, may all be mannerism, 
scarcely to be mistaken. But it has its more recondite 
phases. Do you shrink with dismay from the swaggerer 
who requites your familiar salutation with a volley 
of contumelious slang, laughs in your face without 
colourable pretext, and has the same machinery of 
attack and identical verbal ammunition, for every 
victim whom he thinks peaceable enough to receive 
his fire? Before you set him down for irreclaimable, 



MANXERISM. 53 

be sure he is not a mannerist ; likely enough he is a 
lily-livered Bobadil, and is only j)uddering now to 
repair a sorry reputation of which incipient puberty 
is beginning to make him ashamed : and as it is too 
late for half-measures, he tries to atone by aping 
the gaucheries of some pugilistic prototype since 
knocked on the sconce and gathered to his ancestors. 

The lack-a-daisical mannerist is a sickly flower 
— not ^^ born to blush unseen." His novitiate is a 
season of severe self-conflict, superinducing, however, 
a veritable lassitude of soul and body, which makes 
his effeminacy at length sit easy upon him. Affecta- 
tion may, in this sense, be said to work its own cure 
— ^though at the expense of the man's constitution. 

Great men should really avoid extremes, if only to 
discountenance the vice of mannerism. See the 
swarms of youngsters, under forty, who, indifferent 
to the symmetry of etiquette and stature, because 
they're a little florid, and have a credit with their 
tailors, break the hearts or split the sides of their 
amadas, with a stupendous devotion to an inimitable 
heau-ideal. Those custard-cup wristbands would not 
be amiss, if they could be kept clean. The economy 
of eye-glasses has latterly become too abstruse for 
desultory discussion. 

Wits ought to be very plain in their dress and 



54 MANNERISM. 

manner. We object to too mucli expression even in 
an intelligent countenance ; but the imitation of it 
or its correlative vivacities by an imbecile, is dis- 
tressing. A forlorn chuckle, or a vapid wink of the 
eye, are exhibitions at which very humanity shudders. 
Is there any ground for believing that in this, the 
famed land of practical sense and virtue, men of pure 
average lives and conversation, and untainted reputa- 
tions have been known, under the infatuations of this 
strange passion, to compound with Mephistopheles 
for a term of life, receiving in exchange for for- 
feited respectability, substance, peace of mind, troops 
of friends, and moral sanity, nothing but the melan- 
choly pleasures connected with the unprofitable 
science of mannerism. 



THE DISAPPOINTED MAN. 55 



THE DISAPPOINTED MAN. 

He started in life with the notable resolve to be 
Caesar or nothing, and he has compassed neither, for 
he is not Caesar, and he is something worse than a 
negation — an impersonation of rampant melancholy. 
It would be going too far to say he may be known at 
sight, for he is not quite so woe-begone as to have 
become a sloven, nor is he touched enough to have 
earned the appellation of " a character." He appears 
still what is called a gentleman^ inspiring involuntary 
respect for his person and a superficial confidence in 
his honour. But, start a topic — and see the 
animus that possesses him. He is a loyalist, and 
God-blesses his sovereign, but hopes her young head 
won't be turned. Of feminine beauty in the general 
he will descant like a fanatic upon the gauds of 
Bartlemy Fair, for he has forsworn the sex, and, stead- 
fast to his vow as he best can be, eschews the bland- 
ishments of sense, and, like Hamlet with Ophelia, 
contaminates impulse with intemperance, and controls 



56 THE DISAPPOINTED MAN. 

his thoughts with words. Maidens are children — 
matrons are speculists ; the former only pretty pup- 
pets in the hands of intriguing mothers, or, if any- 
thing more intelligent, heartless, mercenary, and 
triflers all, requiring only to be known to be despised ; 
the mothers are harpies, and legitimate traders in the 
flesh and blood of their progeny. Such the current 
of his commentaries upon the diviner half of his 
species, flowing through his scurrilous lips like ichor 
from the wound of a tender disappointment ! 

He would have been famous. For no less than the 
authorship of a new philosophy, free from the cant of 
opposing schools, expounding all manner of truth, 
and with an unction to "charm the trees," and make 
the welkin to resound, " not for an age, but for all 
time." But, mistaking inclination for power, heat 
for fire, sympathy for fancy, and assurance for security, 
he has failed of the brilliant consummation, the bare 
thought of which could more than electrify himself 
with delicious transports. An indifferent ear is 
turned to his appeal. His strain is not felt to be 
musical, nor impassioned, nor has it the humour to 
amuse, or the touches of nature that vibrate in the 
human breast. But, he says it has^ and maintains 
his groimd, proof against proof. The fatal sentence 
is pronounced, not in mitigated phrase, but with 



THE DISAPPOINTED MAN. 57 

absolute silence — tliis lie jDroclaims a Yillany, his 
wrong, and a nation's disgrace — and supports his 
position by instituting contrasts between the popular 
and the unpopular, and, mistaking coincidence for 
consequence, arguing that because popularity hath 
been abused, neglect must be the test of merit — 
making short work of criticism, of which vituperation 
is the strain, and his own martyrdom the moral — 
for, shame to say, he makes it personal, picks up 
spiteful rumours in by-places, tales of school-days 
and anecdotes of scandal, exaggerates his facts, 
colours the picture, not failing to amplify ad libitum 
on his special opportunities of observation, and thus 
essays to lie a poor lion's life away with the pestilent 
breath of detraction. Many a sufferer is indebted for 
the pangs of disappointment not less to the folly of 
sanguine and misjudging friends than to the in- 
fluence of his own inherent vanity. The youngster 
displays what they are pleased to term a precocity — 
more than the average inclination for study and 
aversion to sport, and a native talent beside in in- 
diting metrical compliments to his godmother, lam- 
pooning his poor uncle, and quizzing his bosom 
friend behind his back. He is petted as " a genius" 
— so like Pitt in profile, or Fox in full front — great 
things are predicted of him — he is the future bishop. 



58 THE DISAPPOINTED MAN. 

or secretary, or chancellor. Anon he makes his debut. 
It is unsuccessful. Excuses are devised : he tries 
again — worse than before : interest is then made for 
him — influence sought, and bought, and feigned, but 
all to no purpose, for he cannot soar, not even like a 
bubble, nor against the ponderous inflation of pride 
sustain himself one inch above terra firma. Now 
might a dose of true humility save him and make all 
right — but, expectation crammed, he cannot swal- 
low it. Fate has decoyed, then tricked, him — so 
" he turns and rends." The atrabilarian ! He indites 
the universe for conspiracy — the time is out of joint — 
the march of intellect retrograde — the tables are 
turned, — he would rank with the great neglected, or 
flatters himself he has been beaten in a conflict — he's 
a perpetual monodist, and a dismal tune he sings to, 
the screech-owl's lament, a requiem for fictitious 
obsequies, a wail for blighted promise. Accost him, 
but do it warily, because of his disdain, its copious- 
ness, its implacableness, and the profundity of its 
depths, from out of which, like a lunatic, he dares the 
great globe to single combat. 

The disappointed s^atesmarij who has had the 
trouble of growing rich ere he indulged the ambition 
to be great, is more subdued in his melancholy, and 
not by any means so vicious in defeat. He is not 



THE DISAPPOINTED MAN, 59 

hopeless neither, but will abate his dimensions, and 
relax from the magnificence of pretension to the ob- 
scurity of usefulness, without a nightmare or a groan ; 
for, apart from the advantage of his matured age, 
the new walk of emulation he has chosen is not less 
practical in its character than prominent in attraction 
for the adult student, and he very speedily leams that 
perspicacity is better than " blarney," and business- 
tact than Promethean fire. 

But watch the mammonist himself, the slave of 
gold — any time but when he's asleep. He anticipates 
the dawn, and leaves his wholesome bed, not a mouse 
nor a lap-dog stirring, to sit robed like a Mussulman 
or an expectant accoucheur, exploring mentally the 
state of the markets and ruminating with a cool head 
upon the inscrutable providence of fortune. In the 
pursuit of boundless wealth his whole humanity is 
absorbed. His industry has been rewarded with 
success — but he would earn enough to pay his way 
to heaven. In the flush of confidence, he makes a 
rash stake, his estate is involved in a labyrinth, his 
skill is baffled, the concatenation transpires, and he is 
'in common parlance ruined. What becomes of him ! 
If men could but prize disappointment as it deserves, 
it might prove to them the most valuable of the 
lessons of experience, but too often its effects are to 



60 THE DISAPPOINTED MAN. 

exasperate the mind and poison the springs of action. 
So with the money-hunter, when he has nothing to 
fall back upon in his day of adversity. Incensed with 
care, he seeks to drown it in the bowl, stifle it with 
uproar, or charm it away with gas-light — to slake 
his fevered thirst with fire. He dares not look 
his destiny in the face, but runs — misery at his 
heels — and keeps up the melancholy dance till a 
brain-fever places him under a new economy, and a 
subscription has to be raised to place his accomplished 
daughters " out in the world." 

Is he a disappointed son of Mars ? To him then 
go for statistics of favouritism, and official corruption 
in high places, and he'll discourse with you upon that 
theme until his eyelids cease to wag, sighing with 
woeful ditty made to the mysteries of promotion, 
stigmatizing his compeers in succession, or storming at 
a breach of patronage. The brevet was his only 
windfall — and his heart feels as old as the service 
that has sickened it. Or, has a distant territory 
been the scene of his experiment ? and did he leave 
his native shore " when George the Third was king," 
bounding with high and martial aspiration to return 
with fame and fortune after the manner of the happy 
heroes ? The novitiate over, the calenture subsides — 
and he one day comes home with a small stipend and 



THE DISAPPOINTED MAN. 61 

a grey head, to view the alterations in the metropolis, 
and hear about what sort of people his deceased re- 
lations were, and to tell us of the undoubted character- 
istics of Eastern gOYemors,the discomforts of a desolate 
campaign, the horrors of an itinerant mess, and the 
absolute dearth of female society and good tailors 
abroad, — and to put himself under the care of om- 
most eminent physician — 

" Sick, sick ; unfound the boon " 

Alas, he too must minister to himself, account his 
ailment a chimera, ponder glad or sad of his right 
to realise his wishes ; contemplate duty as the equi- 
valent of honour, and read Easselas through^ which he 
couldn't do of yore for thinking of his crimson jacket — 
and who can tell the ordeal he has passed since that 
bright day, but The Disappointed Man ! 



62 THE SANGUINE MAN. 



THE SANGUINE MAN. 

This is an evergreen, — nourished by the storms of 
life! — His years are near upon threescore, his mis- 
carriages have at least equalled that number, he has 
fathomed the depths of disappointment, has, indeed, 
been " a pipe for fortune to finger ^^^ if not to " sound 
what stop she pleases ;" he knows he is now on the 
declivity, and that by prescription of nature the rest 
should soon " be labour and sorrow" — and yet he's 
as sanguine as ever ! Analyse him we cannot, nor con- 
jecture by what patent process of embalmment the 
sanguine man has thus conserved his spirits and his 
springs of enterprise alive amid the heap of ashes — 
refuse of vain hopes — of which his heart is the centre, 
without seeming aware of the contiguity, and which 
were quite sufficient to " stap the vitals " of any less 
^^ sanguine" man than himself. His career will not 
bear tracing ; for he has been a rolling stone, and 
has shifted his ground, like Van Amburgh or the 
Inimitable Dwarf. The sanguine nian is by no 



THE SANGUINE MAN. 63 

means respectable ; it is not in reason that lie should 
be, for though he have many a time enjoyed the repu- 
tation of prosperity, his reverses have outnumbered 
his " hits," and the eclat of his success has been obli- 
terated by the more enduring taint of his misfortunes. 
He will not do to be seen about with, in the sanc- 
tuaries and thoroughfares of life ; but a tete-a-tete with 
him, cum privilegio^ in jovial or rural solitude, 
screened from the notice of a prying world, " chancing 
it," incog, on a journey, or ensconscedin the snuggery 
of a chimney corner, is always delightful — there is 
an animus about him pertaining exclusively to the 
" sanguine man," which refreshes the spirit and dis- 
poses to Christian charity. Not one word does he 
utter on the beaten topic of the miseries of life ; he 
pesters you with no expositions of deep-laid schemes 
for avenging an indignity or a wrong, no moody spe- 
culations upon what he might have been, or might 
have done, under circumstances which did not trans- 
pire, or under influences to which he never was acces- 
sible ; no woeful lamentation on the intracability 
of youth, the impracticability of age, the reckless 
sway of passion, the expensiveness of experience, the 
wantonness of chance and the vanity of all things, — 
with no asperities to pervert, no tcedium vitce to 
depress, he takes the sunny side, and peers into the 



64 THE SANGUINE MAN. 

radiant future. Fortune seeking to him, — though 
" buffets and rewards " have fallen to his lot in un- 
equal succession, and he has " taken them with equal 
thanks," — has seemed a golden dream. By a felicitous 
endowment of the mental palate he has tasted the 
unctuosities of pleasure, but only drunk of the waters 
of bitterness. The lessons of life lighten, but not 
erilighten him. ^' The uses of adversity " to him, are 
rather bracing than "sweet," they give him nerve with- 
out philosophy, plasticity without power, aspirations 
in place of honour, multifold " kicks," and very few 
" halfpence ; " and hapless as his case must be with 
the genius he defies, he is game and dilemma-proof to 
the last, and comes off " more than a conqueror," 
though a very considerable loser, from every conflict 
in which he shrinks not from engaging. Timely 
insensibility is his great, main accomplishment. He 
seems to thrive upon the sport of being knocked 
round and about upon the sconce, and rises from a 
flabbergastering '^ like a giant refreshed." Different 
from ordinary mortals, his happiness does not fluc- 
tuate according to his circumstances, although his 
energies expand with the exigencies that call them 
into operation ; when he fails in an undertaking, he 
has but to transfer his ever available powers, such as 
they are, to a new theatre of exertion, — the parapher- 



THE SANGUINE MAN. 65 

nalia of his craft lie all in a small compass, and he 
can change his quarters at the shortest notice with a 
world of impunity on his head, light and handy as a 
porter's knot. He has vague notions that something 
particularly brilliant is in store for him, and he con- 
soles himself for a faux-pas by the conclusion that he 
has merely stumbled on the wi'ong box. He is a 
very hero in defeat. He wants no breathing-time 
from blowing his exhaustless bubbles. Versatile 
and invulnerable — buoyant, invincible adventurer ! 
Fit match for the demon Despair with all his terrors, 
fling them in what imagery he may. Great things 
and little, swift or slow, stern reality or " unreal 
mockery," alike find him cap-a-pie^ armed at all 
points, or at the signal of disaster winged for extempo- 
raneous flight into new regions of experiment. Does 
he win? — visions of after-winnings cast his real 
gains into the shade. Or lose? — "bad luck's" a 
gratuity, and 'twere ill to " look the gift horse in the 
mouth." All weathers suit him ; " the skyey influ- 
ences " are all one to him ; and all conditions, life, 
death, or immortality, may be blessed. 

One hardly knows whether more to commiserate 
or to envy the " sanguine man." Trusting solely to 
imagination, without regard to the monitions of ex- 
perience, basing his calculations on hypotheses, and 

F 



66 THE SANGUINE MAN. 

living ever in the future, he has been betrayed into 
such aberrations from the ceremonious path, as pre- 
clude him from the means of amendment and the 
right of atonement, and fix him without the pale of 
what " the judicious " count respectability. Credit 
shudders at his approach. — On the other hand, though 
his head is a poor one, the spirit of liberty, the 
romantic ardour, the soul of fortitude, the victorious 
hearty are inherently and inalienably his : and it is a 
genial lesson for you of the conventional school, who 
deal not in chimeras, and pursue your avocations " by 
the card," to chance upon him, and witness, if but 
for the passing hour, how independently of accident 
and extrinsic circumstance the principle of happiness 
may flourish in the human breast. 

** Quod petis hie est — est Ulubris ! " 



THE CAUTIOUS MAN. 67 



THE CAUTIOUS MAN. 

He was cautious from a boy. Sliy of acquaintances 
without an introduction, learned in antidotes against 
danger, chary of feeling — upon principle, a connois- 
seur in flannel, lamb's-wool, and thick soles, in cold 
and damp weather. Never let off a squib, and never 
took heartily to his gun. No skater, nor smoker, 
nor sitter-up, nor scribbler, nor adventurer nor — lover! 
His didactic mamma, or his circumspect nurse, or 
his own precocious instinct, must have imbued his 
infant mind with an anticipatory dread of the innu- 
merable perils and pitfalls, snares, steel-traps, and 
spring-guns, which beset the pilgrim's path through 
life ; for he was ever en garde^ — when the least 
sprightly with a companion he was always widest 
awake, temptation lured him in vain, he looked before 
he leapt, and therefore never stumbled, nor ventured 
upon strange ground, nor trespassed in forbidden 
precincts. And the inevitable consequence of all 
this is, that he is open to no influences which do 



68 THE CAUTIOUS MAN. 

not bear the " test of strict examination ;" lie punc- 
tiliously beats time to tbe pulsations of his heart, 
and devoutly hopes, that as he has begun so he may 
continue, to run the course allotted him, without 
incurring the disgrace of being " imposed upon," or 
" taken aback," either from lack of prudence, or a 
want of foresight ; and that, however true it may be, 
that no mortal is perfect, or omnibus horis sapit^ he 
may be preserved from that direst of delinquencies, 
the victimizing, or, in his own phrase, the " making 
an ass of himself," as other Christians have done 
before him. 

His first solicitude in rising of a morning is to 
elude the contingency of a chilly and his alacrity wit- 
nessed in the earlier stages of his toilette might be 
mistaken for constitutional, or a skip-and-jump effu- 
sion of pure animal spirits. But no — the source of all 
his hrusquerie is an abiding horror of colds. Perhaps 
one of the most impracticable things short of the 
marvellous, would be to allure him into the open air 
(in any but the most genial weather) without his 
having broken his fast, even were it only upon a 
biscuit or a sip of coffee ; such excursions being, as 
he terms them, foolhardy, and much best let alone — 
unless at the call of duty, which of course were im- 
perative. And having breakfasted, he loiters, or pro- 



THE CAUTIOUS MAN. 69 

vokes a discussion or sets about Triiting a long letter, 
or sends for ^ Matthew ' to parley with, touching the 
farrier's bill, or the broken fences, or the depredations 
of his neighbour's poultry — anything, as an excuse 
for " sitting awhile " after his meal, like a mindful 
disciple of Abernethy. 

It is still better to see him mount his steed, after 
a scrutinizing survey of his fore-quarters, done with 
an air of humanity worthy the incomparable Richard 
Martin — yet all with a view to his own security. 
How he reconnoitres, and wishes the mail-coach at 
its journey's end as it gallops past him on the road, 
and frightens Dobbin into a morning hornpipe or an 
incipient fit of the staggers. With what a calm 
sobriety does he greet his bluff fiiend who jogs up to 
him on the back of old Bucephalus, and accosts him 

with the usual obstreperous salutation , resisting 

the inspiration of his humom% forbearing to enter 
into the spirit of his jokes, keeping a vigilant eye on 
the curb and the snaffle, and sitting on his saddle 
with all the inflexibility of the cockswain of a wherry, 
or the man in armour at the Lord Mayor's Show. 

Edifying, also, to watch the tact with which he 
comports himself as a stage-coach traveller. He 
looks inside, and sees somebody there with whom he 
would not be so closely confronted. Observe the 



70 THE CAUTIOUS MAN. 

deliberation with wliich he climbs aloft, the methodical 
equipment of his person according to the temperature 
and prospects of the weather, and the remarkable dis- 
cretion he displays in his casual intercourse with the 
other passengers, — for as he says, good-humour is 
all Ycry well, and IVIr. Tallboys there is an agreeable 
enough sort of fellow, but men who want nothing are 
not so pleasant, and it is best to keep on the safe 
side. And then, admire the toleration he displays on 
occasion of encroachment or presumption from one of 
those ruffians that occasionally infest the public vehi- 
cles, — an altercation with one of them, as he well 
observes, might upset one for the whole day. He is 
necessarily a peaceable man, and in his commonplace 
book, commenced some years back, may be found, 
among other authorities for cultivating that spirit, a 
citation from Shakspeare, wherein a novice is admon- 
ished to " beware of entrance to a quarrel." "Whe- 
ther the exhortation that follows, '^ but being in, 
bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee," is 
equally appreciated by the " Cautious Man," may be 
doubtful ; but the praise due to him for averting the 
occasion for consulting it cannot be withheld. 

The acumen with which he pursues his daily vo- 
cation, is evidenced in the pages of his banker's book, 
his rent-toll, or his ledger, by official record of his 



THE CAUTIOUS MAN. 71 

rapid promotion, or the celebrity of his professional 
name, and the purity of his general reputation — save 
that where he has to adjudicate on the conflicting 
claims of self-interest and benevolence, it is feared he 
is seldom actuated by "an inclination to the more 
benign extreme." But, his actions are unimpeachable, 
whatever may be thought of his motives. Frugal in 
his cheer, temperate in his pleasures, narrow in his 
views of human accountability, and with all the doors 
in his house well bolted, he seeks his early pillow, with 
a mind tolerably at ease, and " sleeps well." 

It does enhance one's notions of the consistency and 
uniformity of his character thus to behold him in all 
situations and seasons preserving that self-custody 
and ever-watchful care to remote consequences, which 
give a practical stamp to his imperturbability, and 
have earned for him the designation of " The Cautious 
Man." 

Long talkers oppress him, and he gives them the 
slip ; humorists are unsafe at the best, and so he 
never trusts them ; boors, he does not dislike — in 
the way of business ; upstarts, he regards as arrant 
fools ; and " humbugs," as their own enemies. He is 
especially cautious with the " gentler sex," — knowing 
their power, and the impunity with which they wield 
it, he thinks much evil of them in his heart ere they 



72 THE CAUTIOUS MAN. 

can be admitted to his confidence, — with all their 
charms, they are but attachees, and their scale of 
reflected respectability is the thermometer of his 
love for them. 

He is too "cautious" a man not to know that 
" honesty is the best policy." Therefore, if you can 
pledge him to your service, by all means secure him. 
He is no great " catch" in a bargain ; as a coadjutor, 
he loves " the lion's share ; " he can " beat you at 
barter ; " and is only to be circumvented by a villain. 
But there are relations, in which he may subserve the 
interests of his fellow-creatures, and in retaliation for 
the general selfishness of his life, they should be im- 
posed on him without reserve. He makes a good um- 
pire or assignee, — and if you have an investment in 
shares, rely on it your " company" would do well to 
make him a director. He is a good guardian, and 
would make an admirable godfather, if an entire 
disregard of the duties of that sacred relation were 
not so unscrupulously sanctioned by the world. But, 
he is exact in his observance of the secular code ; and 
we may conscientiously pay him the compliment of 
affirming, that if you are about to make your will, 
and have not a pound to spare for legacies, you 
cannot appoint a better executor than the Cautious 
Man! 



THE GENTEEL MAN. 73 



THE GENTEEL MAN. 

Amidst our modern perversions of language it may 
be observed that the once-honoured epithet " gen- 
teel " has been appropriated to a class of people, as 
the Methodists and Quakers, eminently peculiar to 
themselves. They will not^do for psychological ana- 
lysis, but a superficial portraiture of them may not 
be unacceptable. 

A " genteel" man is rather carefully than well 
dressed : he is especially elaborated about the neck 
and breast : he is expensive in gloves, and less so in 
hats than in hat-brushes : his flaw in dress is in the 
article of boots (though we shouldn't " look down at 
his feet ".), which are low-priced for a person affording 
to carry about him the property which a " genteel 
man " bedizened for the day usually does. He walks 
deliberately, and observes the scene and scenery about 
him with temper and equanimity : though fatigued 
by exercise, he prefers dragging on to his destination 
to chancing it in a public vehicle ; and if the driver 



74 THE GENTEEL MAN. 

(not knowing) importune Mm with a proffered abate- 
ment of the fare, he feels a thrill. With newspaper 
in hand he culls choice morsels from the general 
contents to fortify his resources for evening conver- 
sation, besides occasionally looking for a letter of his 
own to the Editor, upon some minor matter of me- 
tropolitan economy, such as the better regulation of 
scavengers, water-carts, and cab-stands, or the con- 
ditional exclusion of sweeps from the principal 
thoroughfares. He gives a formal and steady atten- 
tion to his business, but is slow to take a hint or 
receive advice tendered iih the purest spirit of disin- 
terestedness. His intercourse is more lengthened 
with a subordinate than with a superior — the inter- 
est he takes in the conference depending rather upon 
his importance with the individuals than on that of 
the business he has to transact with them. He is 
scrupulous in his diet, and takes his lean of a chop 
at one o'clock ; after which he begins to feel insipid 
and may be provoked into asperities towards, his dog 
or other helpless dependant, provided there be pre- 
sent no more formidable witness of such aberration 
from sectarian decorum. Inanity torments him for 
an hour or two, when he revives and sallies forth to 
display himself to his slight acquaintance. He 
stands upon his reputation for " gentility," and 



THE GENTEEL MAN. 75 

moves about without fear of molestation : no one, he 
knows, can call him hail-fellow, slap him on the 
back, or disparage his dignity by that accursed fami- 
liarity, which is more odious to him than calumny 
or carnal sin. He promenades with an emulation 
and a full faith in his realization of the cut and 
finish of a marvellous gentleman. He keeps a sharp 
look-out for distinguished intirnes and salutes them 
in turn with feverish nonchalance. He dines abste- 
miously and with uncompromising etiquette. His 
boon qualities are inconsiderable, his conversational 
lore being principally confined to matters connected 
with the Home Department, viz. the magistracy, 
police, poor-laws, and rumours touching the harm- 
less predilections and antipathies of exalted person- 
ages, and his literary taste is imbued with the same 
contractedness and tendency. Mechanical science is 
a sealed book to him, and on the too popular topic 
of accidents he prefers those which occur in high life. 
He may possibly shine at the whist-table. He 
recoils from excitement, poetry, speculative philo- 
sophy, sentiment, scandal, and, though last not 
least, snuff. If he has a stall at the Opera, well and 
good ; but he won't come down from the boxes merely 
for the ballet. He keeps excellent hours ; is seldom 
seen in a stable, never in a billiard-room ; and never 



76 THE GENTEEL MAN. 

eats oysters (though he likes them) nor smokes a 
mild Havannah, and never bets. Among other ab- 
stinences he may be said never to make love ; he 
can't : he will try by way of imitating others, but 
breaks down invariably. He never attempts such a 
thing before dinner. Champagne may deliver him 
of a squalid compliment ; and with an extra fillip he 
has been known to sport a misquotation from Ovid 
or the " Melodies ; " but such instances are rare, and 
reasonably so, for they are rare sport to the object 
that inspires his abortive efforts of art. His suscep- 
tibility to the tender passion appears to be little 
more than a vague sense or appreciation of any par- 
ticularly-marked kindness evinced towards him by 
any highly respectable and unexceptionable female 
whatsoever. 



THE DANDY. 77 



THE DANDY. 

The Dandy appears to be a specimen of Iminamtj 
sui generis^ standing out in superfine relief from the 
general throng — an instinctive nonconformist, sophis- 
ticate in fashion as in nature, and arrayed against 
the conventionalities of his species in the garb of a 
" fantastico," nothing if not pictorial. 

Yet, though costly, and sightly, and brilliant to the 
sense, he is not all vanity ; exulting in his proficiency 
in the science of elaboration more than in the emi- 
nence, spite of all, it procures him. There is a chaste- 
ness in his profusion, a tincture of austerity in his 
very luxuriance. The rude critic does not estimate 
his subtilty, and is far from dreaming that he may 
by possibility be a philosopher. But it has been 
thought abroad, that forasmuch as the Dandy tribe, 
so far as the chronicles record, has never been con- 
victed of generic or sectarian imbecility ; they may 
yet reconcile themselves to a disapproving world, and 
that in the progress of enlightenment we may see 



78 THE DANDY. 

the Dandy, now " caviare to the general," assume his 
rightful station amongst us, and become as conspi- 
cuous, radiate as brightly, and comport himself as 
exquisitely in a moral sense as he has hitherto done in 
a physical one. The way is open to him. Unre- 
vealed, he is yet untarnished, and needs no perfume 
of Arabia to vindicate his claim to confraternity 
with his kind. He may yet make a character. At 
present he is but an enigma. 



THE BLIND FIDDLER. 79 



THE BLIND FIDDLER. 

There is a Blind Fiddler in the city, as well known 
there as Wilkie's picture in the shop-windows. He 
is a genuine character, as far as he goes — that is to 
say, he is thoroughly blind, and he is a thorough 
" fiddler." Not a thorough violinist^ be it understood — 
all-accomplished in the practice, theory, and appre- 
ciation of his art, — but a thorough, pertinacious 
" fiddler ; '^ neither above nor below his calling ; 
neither so refined as to care much for intonation, nor 
so lost in the vagrancy of his craft as to fail in 
securing a certain subsistence by its exercise ; looking 
less to music as the minister of his fame than to his 
fiddle as the staff that supports his position in the 
world! priding himself more on his notoriety than 
his accomplishment ; a practitioner, rather than a 
student of his art ; the relentless " fiddler." Con- 
sidering what Blind Fiddlers, both to hear and to 
look at, usually are, his fiddling and his personnel are 
both decidedly of a superior order. He does not con- 



80 THE BLIND FIDDLER. 

descend to mere snatches, but plays a thing through ; 
is never without his rosin, has always four strings 
to his instrument, and actually can tune it. The in- 
dividual here spoken of is in the habit of visiting the 
alleys near the Exchange, about four or five o'clock 
in the afternoon, when it is in human nature in those 
parts to require a little refreshment, and men of 
business are accustomed to retire in small knots and 
coteries into hilarious seclusion after the pother and 
bustle of the day. He is attended by a boy with a 
harp, the very image of the Fiddler — excepting that, 
like all sons of blind fathers, he has a brilliant pair of 
eyes ; and a girl (another strong family likeness) with 
a box, who collects the contributions. He takes his 
stand by the door of the principal tavern : in due time 
he draws his fiddle from a shabby green bag, which he 
carries himself, and, twisting his head to make room 
for it under his left ear, commences the operation of 
" tuning," which is soon accomplished. In theatric 
phrase, "the doors are now open;" a sensation is 
created, his little retinue begins to collect about 
him, — the adjacent fruit-woman or her assistant, 
the neighbouring ticket-porter, and the " Beauty 
of the Alley" — a comely vendor of floricultural 
delicacies — approach him. These are his privileged 
customers; they are on his free-list, and are 



THE BLIND FIDDLER. 81 

expected to give nothing. The very first urchin 
threading the thoroughfare, and not tied to time, is 
arrested instinctiyely by the gathering scene that 
meets his eye, and after him every successive strag- 
gler, until an " audience," decent in numbers if not 
in quality^ is collected to do honour to the first ebulli- 
tion of the bow. A stamp of the foot, and the concer- 
tante commences, — an unpleasing, abstruse, and even 
difficult performance, for the Blind Fiddler is a 
pedant in his way, and his most impracticable bits 
he produces first, while he is fresh in the market, 
and can best command attention. Incipient har- 
monics, abortive double stops and chromatics, 
transitions, bursts and pauses, and an emulation of 
all the wondrous clap-trap which we are instructed 
to consider, when well done, as embracing the heights 
and mysteries of the science, grace the introductory 
display of his powers. By the termination of his first 
piece, he has, perhaps, a body of a dozen of the com- 
monalty around him — the ticket-porter, the floricul- 
turist, the fruiterer or her delegate, the urchin not 
tied to time, and the successive stragglers, together 
making up an " audience" of about that number. 
With the gradual increase of the company the ex- 
citement of the performer evidently rises, every ac- 
cession of a footstep is an incentive to fresh exertion, 



82 THE BLIND FIDDLER. 

and by the time he has finished his second exhibition, 
he has fairly warmed into something like " a feeling 
of his business." The crowd thickens, and a policeman 
stalks by to see that all is orderly. While the box 
goes round for chance contributions, the Fiddler puts 
his Cremona between his knees, lift his hat from his 
head, and takes from it a cotton Belcher^ with which 
he smoothes his somewhat flushed cheeks and throb- 
bing temples — but calls for no vulgar aids to " whet 
his whistle," and betrays no further indications of ex- 
haustion. He is calm and reserved in his triumph — 
the C3niosure of the court, the lion " of the minute" — 
conscious of his attraction, but with no unseemly 
air of presumption or impunity, he reposes in the 
short interval of silence, thinking on his reputation, 
his coffers, and his supper. By this time, he has no 
inconsiderable section of the public under his spell, 
for besides those standing around him, he counts 
twice their number of better friends and supporters 
in the coffee-room, for which he presumes himself to 
be specially retained, and to which he more par- 
ticularly dedicates his humble services. Stockbrokers, 
with their pints of port — auctioneers, with their 
half-pints — captains, with their beloved grog — cigar- 
smokers, who " can't eat," and have no patience to 
wait till they're hungry — landlords, and their nieces 



THE BLIND FIDDLER. 83 

"in the bar" — and though not last nor least, z^aeV^r^. 
These latter functionaries especially relish the music ; 
— they seem almost to break bounds for the nonce, 
and cease to account themselves public property. 
Under ordinary circumstances, and where there is no 
excuse for insubordination, it is scarcely permitted to 
the waiter of any pretensions to respectability to vent 
the impertinence of good spirits, the elasticity of 
common cheerfulness, or in any way to relax the cold 
automatonism which constitutes the etiquette of his 
order ; but at this moment, and under this stimulus, 
he is all secret IcTity and life, — suits the action to the 
note, and hums a discord to the screeching cadence, 
wherever he can poke his nose " behind the arras," 
and escape the notice of " the gentlemen." He will 
take a peep at the fiddler's daughter through the 
crack of the door, or ogle the flower- vendor through 
a window corner. Happy, if he find an excuse for 
crossing the area to purchase an extra newspaper, or 
try to obtain change for a light sovereign ; — he fails 
not in his flight to salute the master of the throng, 
and in returning, to whisper in his willing ear a 
" bespeak," for some popular tune that anybody may 
understand. Whereupon father and child strike up 
" Where the Bee sucks," " Auld lang Syne," or 
^^ Sally in our Alley," — which the poor steward 



84 THE BLIND FIDDLER. 

listens to with all the emotion which the temperature 
of those dark purlieus will allow so small a man as a 
waiter to indulge. The alteration of his strain is de- 
cidedly a change for the better ; every one now listens 
with ease, curiosity gives place to pleasure, and noise 
is exchanged for sentiment which finds an echo in 
every breast. The waiter, who at first was only ex- 
cited, now becomes entranced. By changing his 
theme from the " astonishing" (for which, though he 
played like a Paganini, he should hardly be appreci- 
ated by such an auditory) to the more natural and 
homely style for which his abilities are better adapted, 
the fiddler attracts additional listeners in the sur- 
rounding habitations. The door of the opposite 
cigar-shop is thrown open, and the charms of melody 
help to cleanse it of its reeldng vapours. A group of 
idlers who had been whiling a spare half-hour with 
the picture-dealer at the corner, criticising the last 
caricature, debating the terms of a projected raffle, or 
canvassing the state of the market in that respected 
gentleman's particular line of business, are instan- 
taneously drawn by the burst of a popular air to 
something more than a consciousness of the presence 
of the blind fiddler. Even the picture-dealer liimself, 
accustomed to the constant repetition of his visits, 
fails not to present himself on the steps, and under 



THE BLIND FIDDLER. 85 

pretence of shaking the cloth with which he had been 
dusting a gilded frame, to take his invariable glance 
at the Blind Fiddler. Notaries' clerks, or, for aught 
that may be, notaries themselves, with pens behind 
their ears and bunches of cherries in their fingers, pop 
out their heads from lofty casements, two or three 
stones high, and with ^' greedy ear devour up his 
discourse." Housekeepers with their needlework are 
seen standing at the doors, and housemaids manifest 
themselves from attic windows. The cellarman half 
emerges from his trap-door, one hand holding a tallow 
candle, and the other resting on the flag-stones, 
gazing and simpering with sudden delight. If the 
value of the entertainment be estimated according to 
its effects, there are few who ever listen to the Blind 
Fiddler, who do not in some sort feel themselves 
lightened by the strain, — and therefore he deserves a 
handsome requital of his labours. There is some- 
thing refreshing and humanising in the scene. The 
very heart of the vicinity is, as it were, stirred into 
unanimous life and enjoyment. Such sights do not 
greet us in the more musical cjuarters of the town. 
The fiddlers of Pall Mall and St. James's complain 
bitterly of the times. The Blind Fiddler in the city 
looks prosperous, proud, and contented. He has all 
the appearance of robust health and mental quietude, 



86 THE BLIND FIDDLER. 

the promise of a green old age, and a long engagement 
yet as fiddler to the citizens. He is the first man of 
his rank, in the first city in the world ! These are his 
claims to public support. It has pleased Providence 
to invest him with another claim, to which more pa* 
thetic allusion might here be allowed, were his popu- 
larity less permanently established than it is, — but in 
behalf of an afflicted fellow-creature, the sympathies of 
an English heart can play ^^ without a prompter." 
All therefore that need be added for the information 
of any reader, who may hereafter recognise the subject 
of this sketch, and who might otherwise be ignorant 
of '^ the story of his life," and the full extent of his 
merit, is that he has maintained his prominent post — 
and ^^ given universal satisfaction" in it — for up- 
wards of five-and-twenty years, together with an un- 
impeachable reputation for sobriety, honesty, and 
modesty. He is a good father — and really a capital 
Fiddler. 



FALSE ESTIMATES. 



FALSE ESTIMATES. 

Promptitude in action has been the theme of eulogy 
with moralists in all ages, and its importance ex- 
emplified in the lives of practical men distinguished 
in their sphere and generation. A man deficient in 
many material qualifications, by force of this habit 
alone, overcomes difficulties, and commands a success 
in his enterprises which others with less decision, 
though more variously endowed, contend with and 
toil after in vain. But, like every other good 
thing, it is perverted and misapplied. It is all very 
well for " action to follow thought as the thunder-clap 
the flash," and there is something inspiriting in 
the bare contemplation of such electric energy ; but 
it is a woeful mistake to suppose it necessary, or, 
without prejudice to truth and justice, practicable, to 
form judgments with the promptitude with which we 
act upon them. We, however, become enamoured of a 
characteristic ; and because it has been found useful as 
an executive virtue, extend the range of its application. 



88 FALSE ESTIMATES. 

employ it in abstract speculation, and manufacture 
opinions* on men and things with a hap-hazard ce- 
lerity, which, traced in its consequences, may account 
for much of the strife and discord which so lamentably 
prevail amongst the various orders of society in this 
Christian country. We get a reputation for promp- 
titude, and, resolving to uphold it under all imaginable 
circumstances, pronounce upon the character of an 
individual without the interchange of a syllable, think 
to penetrate the designs of men through the subtle 
disguises of manner, and holding it derogatory to 
halt between two opinions, make up our minds upon 
matters on which the wisest men differ without even 
moderate research or deliberation. Careful consi- 
deration cannot fail to show the folly of such pre- 
cipitation. It will, in the first place, teach the self- 
confident physiognomist, by the discovery of numerous 
exceptions, that neutralise his false rule of penetration, 
that this "• art to read the mind's construction in 
the face," this ocular system of moral criticism or 
physical standard of mental anatomy, is a fallacious 
one, leading to frequent error and false estimates of 
character, in which the vagaries of affectation under 
show of animation, sedateness, and intenseness, are 
taken as the indications of the most profound and 
attractive qualities by which an individual can be 



FALSE ESTIMATES. 89 

distinguished ; patient merit and the quiet medium 
of propriety are confounded with dulness ; and the 
worthy, but afflicted, and therefore disagreeable, 
valetudinarian is condemned unheard, as an un- 
mitigated, unsufferable bore. 

Among the impostors alluded to, in the class of 
animated people, we see constant motion, a flickering 
susceptibility of expression, ever in action, either 
from the operation of inevitable impressions, or in 
pursuit of them. Such people smile, laugh,- chuckle 
with the eye, compress the lip, sneer, leer, and ogle 
with an alacrity which cannot fail of attracting 
notice, and, if supported by personal advantages, the 
deception is generally triumphant, predilection and 
credulity together acknowledging the claims thus ir- 
resistibly established, though mthout such adven- 
titious aid to effect, the demonstrations in question do 
infinite execution upon the inexperienced. Yet upon 
a nearer acquaintance with these folks we have found 
them exceedingly flat and heavy ; they are the most 
accessible, but, when known, the most neglected 
people in the world. Their piquancy consists of little 
besides interjection, obstreperous detail, and trite 
raillery about caring for " number one," dancing days 
being over, the superiority of one live convalescent to 
half-a-dozen dead ones, rivals finding their level or 



90 FALSE ESTIMATES. 

owing all their blessings to luck, &c. Without even 
the most ceremonious encouragement, they offend by 
their familiarity, they get at your soubriquet and 
circumstances as it were by instinct, attack you in 
public upon matters purely private, and do abuse the 
benign spirit of toleration so abominably that they 
are at last, from a superabundance of social qualities 
of the wrong kind, driven to solitude, emigration, 
demoralisation, or a radical reformation of their 
manners. 

Sedateness has something very imposing about it, 
and probably more of permanent delusion is practised 
through this medium than the other ; for the vi- 
vacious mannerist has a laborious part to sustain, 
and sooner or later must be detected ; whereas, the 
sedate man enjoys a calm impunity ; he goes all the 
way upon trust ; and nothing but gratuitous incon- 
sistency and infidelity to himself can compromise him : 
the very quality which ensures your favour exonera- 
ting him from rude scrutiny or better acquaintance. 

It inspires the idea of solidity in its vastest sense. 
Yet your sedate man often is at heart a funny fellow, 
loves his joke like his bottle, but shames to indulge 
it before company. And it is a resource, too, of mis- 
adventurers of all degrees, who, after an eventful 
career of dalliance with the wheel of fortune, es- 



FALSE ESTIMATES. 91 

sajiiig everytliing by turns, and nothing long, from 
the sophistications of town to the equally congenial? 
when equally profitable, rusticities of the country, 
now guaging the gullibilities of capricious consti- 
tuencies, rich widows, and spinsters, or that fastidious 
oracle ' the public at large ' ; attempting fruitless ex- 
periments upon the gratitude of a prosperous pro- 
tege or upon the rirtue of patient faith in inordinate 
presentiment of better times ; and anon, at a push, ex- 
piating their extravagances through the emollient 
process of insolrency, make one desperate effort, and 
merge their elasticity in the mysterious attitude of 
sedateness. Then do they stare and look callous, 
discard popular provocatiyes to joy and gladness, 
sport tooth-picks at a tragedy, wear black in the 
dog-days, read newspapers in a cricket-ground or 
obsolete books in an omnibus. They will cough to 
catch sympathy, are ostentatious in their charities, 
and affect taciturnity as a cloak to their ignorance. 
If you have intercourse with them, you will find them 
eyasive and mysterious where they ought to haye an 
opinion, and positive upon abstruse things evidently 
beyond the reach of their understanding. They walk 
with measured pace, and would have rectitude stamped 
upon their foreheads, not for the love they bear it, 
but for what it is supposed to propitiate. But thrown 



92 



FALSE ESTIMATES. 



off their guard, they show the cloyen foot, are bashaws 
with the shopkeepers, have no creed but the '^ first 
law of nature," nourish a latent spite for persons of 
undisputed merit, and have been known to assault 
them when inflamed by indulgences to which they 
are secretly addicted. 

The intense school must be mentioned with some 
reverence and reserve, as it comprehends many men 
of real genius and peculiar endowments ; but it 
also includes a constellation of arrant impostors and 
triflers. It has been much encouraged by contact 
with foreigners, and in our plebeian circles much of 
the style which characterises it was introduced by 
those illustrious recipients of ambitious hospitality, 
the Spanish and Italian refugees. The , exotic has 
also been imported by Englishmen, who go abroad 
on a trusty errand, are struck with the punchisms of 
Monsieur and Signor Don, and on their return home 
stagger mine host with their vivacity and confiscate 
the heart and dower of the too-susceptible Miss Kitty 
who had never travelled farther than Calais. In its 
indigenous growth, it pervades the circle of dog- 
matists, quacks, hobbyists, or smatterers in science, 
latitudinarians in morals, local dignitaries, and 
almost all conceited people. The dogmatist, with 
vehement emphasis, declares to Heaven — and he 



FALSE ESTIMATES. 93 

wouldn't mind telling the authorities to tlieir faces — 
that there never was a more disastrous error than 
such and such a truism, and that unborn genera- 
tions will forget their distinctions of pedigree, or the 
progress of machinery, in the contemplation of the 
stupendous moral and intellectual darkness of the 
nineteenth century. More opinionative than patriotic, 
more forcible than profound, these men fly at high 
game, and, despising the humble sport of de- 
molishing folly, injustice, and depravity, aspire to 
war with illustrious reputations, constitutions, funda- 
mental principles, and imprescriptible rights ; and in 
prosecution of their empirical theories, would witness 
the desecration of the Temple of Liberty with as 
little compunction as the obliteration of White 
Conduit House, or the blowing up of a powder- 
magazine. Quacks deal in simplifications, systems, 
and specifics for the redress of every evil, acknow- 
ledge no mysteries, and pretend that the animal, 
man, is equal to any intellectual achievement which 
curiosity or human exigency may render instructive 
or desirable. Quickened by this inspiring philo- 
sophy, he commences imequal conflict with con- 
temporaneous " prejudice," exposes his shallowness 
by too voluble discourse, spoils his eyes by wearing 
spectacles, gets ruined by a blunder, and dies of an 



94 FALSE ESTIMATES. 

ecstasy in an almshouse or a dungeon. It is but 
due, however, to this fraternity to state that, with 
all their eccentricities, they are distinguished by a 
politeness and an air of insincerity in the advocacy 
of their nostrums, which make as good a substitute 
for intelligence as a victim could desire. Hobbyists are 
miniature concentrations of the quack and dogmatist. 
Less bold and versatile, but equally inveterate, — nay, 
superstitious, they lead more peaceable lives, and 
quit the world more like reputable citizens than 
those oddities usually do. They adopt a caprice and 
swear by it, as their secular faith, or exponent of 
latent truth and hidden mystery. With some it 
is music, mysticism, antiquarianism, freemasonry, a 
name, diet, friction, — very entertaining things in 
their way; but not, as our hero would have it, to 
the disparagement of others quite as popular, and, if 
he would believe it, equally profound. It is a 
willing slavery, in the hope that something as- 
tounding may yet come of it. Practical latitudina- 
rians are intense on occasion, and the world wonders 
what is the source of their inspiration. Lady Betty 
appropriating to herself all the credit of her in- 
amorato's proficiency in the soft mysteries of flirta- 
tion. Local dignitaries belong to the intense 
school ; they are self-impregnated, and possibly 



FALSE ESTIMATES. 95 

dream more of themselves when digestion wavers, 
than any dyspeptical Malvolio. The vivida vis of 
the trustee or honorary official is a by-word, and 
no longer worthy the name of a phenomenon. Now, 
all these, and all conceited people, have generally 
something intense and striking in their exterior, 
which should excite suspicion in the judicious ob- 
server who is not ashamed to hesitate before pro- 
nouncing an opinion upon them ; and the result is 
likely to reward him for his circumspection. 



96 SENSIBILITY. 



SENSIBILITY. 



To 



The error against . which you recently put forth a 
caution, namely, the confounding of sentiment with 
sensibility, is a very common one, and the manifesta- 
tion of the latter in early youth is often regarded as 
a presage of future excellence. You well remarked, 
that sensibility was no more than the " dew of feeling." 
It is so, I submit, of feeling generally. Unlike sen- 
timent, sensibility is called forth, not only by occa- 
sions tender and mirthful, but may accompany every 
action of the mind comprehended in the categories 
of pleasure and pain. May I presume to draw your 
attention for a few moments to the sensibility of 
those who feel no tenderness for others, and whose 
mirth, where they have any, is of the cynical school ? 
Kindness in them is all lavished upon themselves, 
and in this sense their benevolence is unbounded. 

Character is early developed. Do we not remem- 
ber in our school-days those little black sheep of the 



SENSIBILITY. 97 

fold — social anomalies — the morose, isolated, im- 
placable creatures, who subscribed not to the free- 
masonry, nor joined in the general pastimes, and 
even discountenanced the festive revebies — epochs 
in the monotonous half-years — that helped to unite 
the young community in a bond of fraternization, and 
the memory of which forms one of the most pleasing 
features in the retrospection of boyhood? Their 
acerbities, I suspect, were not really unaccompanied 
with the " dew of feeling :" beneath the cold imprac- 
ticable exterior at which our generous souls were 
scandalized, the recesses of their inmost spirits, laid 
bare to the microscopic eye, might have disclosed a 
busy scene in the sediment of that " dead pool of the 
heart" where virulent emotions were engendered, 
devices of animosity concocted, or visions of resent- 
ment indulged, against their unconscious foes, not 
with the malignity alone which belongs to the sullen 
and unsociable, but also with that sensibility which is 
incipient passion, and, uncontrolled in such minds, 
confounds the very faculty of deliberation and moral 
perception. We are accustomed to view with unmixed 
abhorrence the character of a coward. Who but a 
coward can conceive what are the workings of a mind 
under the influence of this passion, the sensibility — the 
very soul of cowardice — with which it tortures the 

H 



98 SENSIBILITY. 

heart and the conscience? Shame, too, what sensibility 
is there, what bitter sympathy for self, not for violated 
honour or humanity, nor for the victims of artifice or 
the participators of disgrace, but for the self-con- 
demned offender confronted at last with the terrors of 
retributive justice ! Envy denotes displeasure at 
another's happiness : it is so, but by contrast, the 
original feeling being chagrin at the keen sense of 
destitution of which the sight of another's superiority 
is the most forcible reminder. Vanity — how sen- 
sitive is it ! The sensibility of a mean spirit (and 
vanity is meanness) is none the less, that it is be- 
stowed only on self. Leaving out of view " the 
thousand inconsistencies of man " to which you re- 
ferred — as where one of the most eloquent of senti- 
mentalists was defective in filial sympathy — do we 
not see men, defective enough in filial sympathy, who 
neither write, nor speak, nor feel sentimentally, and 
yet who when their vanity is wounded, display the 
acutest sensibility ? Watch them on occasions when 
their importance in the world's eye is in jeopardy. 
With what appearances of strong feeling have we 
not seen a rich and a poor relative meet each other ! 
From no other cause than the dissimilarity of their 
positions in life, and a deficiency in either of natural 
affection and manly pride, the sensation with which 



SENSIBILITY. 99 

their countenances glow is not tliat of genial pleasure, 
but one of shame mixed on the one side with awe, 
and on the other with ridicule and disdain. Revolt- 
ing as this is, the sensibility in these cases is exqui- 
site. I question if in the whole compass of emotion, 
from the sublimities of passion down to the rivalries 
of equipage and other meretricious display, the ner- 
vous system encounters a greater shock than in such 
collisions. Yet the " greater " man of these two 
(the other may be a sentimentalist), did it serve his 
purpose, would not scruple at the commission of a 
fashionable meanness. He compounds easily enough 
with his conscience, but preserves inviolate faith with 
the master of the ceremonies. He bestrides the 
waters of prosperity with a buoyant selfishness, deaf 
to the calls of charity and to the remonstrances of 
the feeble monitor within. From his old companions 
who cannot keep pace with him in his supererogatory 
gewgaws he exacts an increasing deference in return 
for the gracious continuance of his acquaintance and 
his mirthful contempt at their poverty. And yet 
this specimen will flutter, to his very heart-strings, 
aye, and " pipe his eye " at a whitebait dinner 
where his virtues are parodied by a sycophantical 
toastmaster ; and he will lie awake o' nighis fren- 
zied with sensitive suspense previously to the balloting 



100 SENSIBILITY. 

at a club into which he is a candidate for admission. 
He is black-balled — and there I must beg to leave 
him. Vice^ or meanness, centralizes the current, but 
does not counteract the growth or dry up the springs 
of sensibility. Charity sermons are addressed to the 
nobler feelings, and ought to operate powerfully upon 
the sentimental. The dry-eyed portion of a congre- 
gation, amongst whom that class may be respectfully 
included, are quite as likely to contribute handsomely 
as the more sensitive, for with the latter the amount 
of a donation has veritably been known to depend 
upon who should be the plate-holder, (an extravagant 
compliment to that functionary's perspicacity at the 
expense of his delicacy). So in an audience at a 
theatre, where do we witness the least indications of 
sensibility ? not where there is the most immorality. 
The excitement here so anomalously displayed, often 
during violent scenes in a melodrama, no matter what 
the moral, argues not inconsistency : it is no more 
than indiscriminate maudlin sensibility, which plays 
without any correlative sentiment, the complement of 
an incoherent sympathy, the surviving capacity of emo- 
tion after the extinction of the moral principles with 
which sensibility may have once acted in concert, but 
had no commensurate affinity. If " silence is the per- 
fectest herald of joy," the vulgar ensigns of sensibility 



SENSIBILITY. 101 

are blushes and tears. Now, who are the blushers ? 
The modest fair ? Say rather the bashful and the vain. 
The honest of the rougher sex ? Ask the capitalist 
or the shrewd ecclesiastic what is to be said to the 
adult who blushes. The former will shake his head, 

and the latter, if the Eev. , will declare 

him to be literally without the pale. Honourable 
exceptions there are of course. Then for the tears. 
What does the melting mood in the farourable view 
of it imply so much as weakness ? And how is not 
the accomplishment abused, — 

'• If that the earth could teem with woman's tears. ^'" 

llie sensibility of artful people is cultivated to a 
degree incredible to the unsophisticated. Tears are 
shed naturally ; but being observed to take effect, an 
exaggerated picture of the sympathy really excited is 
conjured by the imagination, which further subdues 
the sinister heart, and another gush is the conse- 
quence. These are crocodiles* tears (the practice is 
common with young children), instigated in the early 
stage by a gentle duplicity, but made presently avail- 
able to the basest ends, and often they do secure 
those ends when plied upon the sentimental and 
unwary. Of such are your weepers. Honourable ex- 
ceptions here again, but they are few and far between. 



102 SENSIBILITY. 

Eccentric sensibility is more an error of head than 
of heart. I was once struck with an instance of 
it in a lamented and ver j unsentimental friend who 
was afflicted with a jjenchant for duelling. He was 
recounting to me the circumstances attendant on the 
death of his father, and entered into the description 
with a vivid force of detail. He was summoned in 
his turn to the bed-side of the dying man, and re- 
ceived from his own hands the bequest of a magnifi- 
cent brace of pistols ! The parting benediction, and 
the melancholy scene of his parent's mortality, he de- 
scribed with much energy, — a rather sprightly enume- 
ration of his virtues, and a not unostentatious one 
of the many distinguished individuals who graced the 
funeral obsequies. He delivered all this, I thought, 
with unseasonable animation, but when he adverted 
to the pistols, his voice faltered — the vibration of 
this eccentric chord awakened his filial sensibility. 
Captivating theme for speculation is chivalrous sen- 
sibility ; but my friend was a civilian ; and I hardly 
knew whether to smile or to moralize, — sympathy at 
the moment was out of the question. 

It were well for the interests of society, if the 
attention of those intrusted with the guardianship of 
the rising generation were more frequently directed 
to those specious impediments to the progress of 



SENSIBILITY. 103 

civilization amongst which may be accounted the sen- 
sihility which consorts with the sordid and the vicious, 
— an insidious eyil, baneful in its operation as overt 
unmitigated depravity, and the impunity of which 
materially contributes to make the world a very unsafe 
one for unsuspicious people to live in. Let them set 
less value, and not be deceived by names, upon the 
bare characteristic of sensibility in the abstract; or 
rather let them find in the discovery of it additional 
reason for a vigilant and rigid inculcation of high 
principles and feelings ; for it assuredly is a tempera- 
ment no more inimical to vice than to virtue : and 
such are the susceptibility, and the subtilty, and the 
disingenuousness of even the infant mind, and so in- 
calculable the pretexts (imdreamt-of in the tutor's 
philosophy) for rebellious antipathy and estrangement 
on the part of a pupil, especially an inapt student, 
that, upon the most trivial or imaginary provocation, 
pique, indolence, and falsehood, unless circumvented 
by the skilful hand, will, in the sheer spirit of im- 
potent heroism, — which for the time is its own ample 
reward, — join issue with the hireling sensihUity in a 
secret conspiracy of passive resistance to authority ; 
and as a foil to the influences of such disaffection upon 
the character and destiny of the neglected youth, the 



104 SENSIBILITY. 

ordinary educational regime supplies little more than 
the promulgation of theories which are enforced but 
as exercises of the understanding, and an occasional 
didactic homilj which is heard and criticised and 
speedily forgotten. 



LIVELINESS. 105 



LIVELINESS. 

There are four sorts of lively ]3eople — funny, loqua- 
cious, cheerful, and impudent. 

Funny people are always popular with one class or 
other, and would be more generally esteemed than 
they are, but for the inadvertencies of converse and 
conduct, which seem to be necessities of their charac- 
ter, and that ungratefulness with which heavy folks 
regard their obligations to the humorist, who, with- 
out requiring more than an honest welcome and per- 
petual good will, fillips away their aches and pains, 
and beguiles them of their own utter tediousness. 
The due allowance is seldom made by the ethical 
faculty for the frailties incident to the humorous 
temperament. Extremes cohere. The wit has his 
hours of metaphysical abstraction, in which infinite- 
simal proof is dearer to his heart than the whimsical 
coruscations of fancy ; and the poor humorist has 
his more sorrowful alternations, often quits the circle 
he had illuminated by his drollery, and through the 
slough of secret despondency trudges home to a sleep- 



106 LIVELINESS. 

less pillow, from which he rises with aching head to 
ply the dreary drudgery of unprofitable duty, varying 
its monotony only with fitful conjectures as to the 
efficacy of his latest remonstrance with an inexorable 
creditor, or yearnings for a repetition of his last 
night's fatal hilarity. Such often is the condition of 
the humorist, struggle with his foibles as he may : 
but they find no extenuation with those who thrive 
upon his deterioration, and whose days he materially 
contributes to lengthen. 

Loquacious people are neither entertaining, charm- 
ing, nor offensive ; but are, nevertheless, not unac- 
ceptable in wet weather, or during the prevalence of 
influenza, as supernumeraries, where numbers may 
possibly run short ; being, at all events, more eligi- 
ble contributors to social eclat than pompous insipi- 
dity or sullen ill-nature. They are of unexceptionable 
morals, respectable means, and not destitute of ster- 
ling active virtues ; but, somehow or other, they are 
not blessed with the tact to propitiate the hearts 
even of their most tolerant companions. They are 
early risers, moderate in appetite, have no wayward 
predilections for grave or gay, conventional or secta- 
rian, poetical or political, sunlight or moonlight ; but 
they are people of their word, are kind to all about 
them, and are always " lively." 



LIVELINESS. 107 

Well-bred clieerfulness is the perfect medium. 
Here we have intelligence without affectation, humour 
without folly, vivacity united with dignity, and fasci- 
nation which never forfeits respect. Any one who 
can be lively after this fashion, may command the 
love and admiration of the world — and deserve it, 

Let not those who are emulous of the reputation 
which some lively people enjoy, deceive themselves by 
thinking that animal spirits alone are sufficient to 
ensure it. To be popular in society, good spirits 
certainly are indispensable, as sensibility in a lover, 
honour in a gentleman, swiftness in a race-horse, 
or poverty in a rope-dancer ; but there are other 
qualifications, let them be assured, positive and 
negative, without which their zeal will only disgust 
others and fatigue themselves in vain. Let them 
avoid equivoque, and devote the assiduity wasted 
in the manufacture of puns to observation of the 
tastes and mood of their company, that they may 
adapt and time their vivacity, and so secure the 
reward to which they think it entitled. Let them 
further avoid offensive raillery — such as compli- 
menting a venerable lady upon her beauty ; asking 
an expectant of brighter days what he has done with 
his phaeton ; or a candidate for orders, whether he 
is very devout ; or an unfortunate member of a large 



108 LIVELINESS. 

family, who has been attacked with premonitory 
symptoms of apoplexy, whether he is the one who 
had had something the matter with his head : or a 
nervous man, how are his nerves. If they must be 
pungent and severe, let them invert their rule of 
sport by selecting vice for a butt ; or if they will 
display their irony, let them do it with politeness, and 
rally those only whose inapposite excellences place 
them beyond the reach of offence. Otherwise let 
them eschew personality, most especially with their 
seniors ; and never stare at people, nor harbour rude 
thoughts of them in their presence (for fear the 
countenance should betray) ; nor even in Christian 
sympathy commiserate them under any circumstances 
to their faces. They have a keen eye for the pecu- 
liarities upon which they exercise their critical 
humour — suppose they open them a little wider, in 
conjunction with the eyes of their understandings, 
and try (nature will aid) to penetrate, and sympathise 
with, the feelings of others, taking their own, which 
they understand well enough, as an initiatory key to 
expound the new mysteries. If they do this, they 
will strike at the root of one obstacle to success in 
society — impudence. 



ENTHUSIASM, 109 



ENTHUSIASM. 

The spirit of Enthusiasm is peculiar to nations and 
to individuals, but not to classes ; nor is it identified 
with any order of pursuit or degree of qualification 
for placing the object of it within reach of attain- 
ment. Like genius, it is independent of the restraints 
to which the cooler impulses of humanity are con- 
denmed to yield submission ; but, unlike that divine 
impulse, it is as indiscriminate in the selection of its 
idol as of its sanctuary, and not merely from the 
castle to the cabin, but from the sublime to the 
ridiculous, the Enthusiast need not be sought in vain. 
The drover ascends the mountain-top and walks forth 
the poet of nature. The veteran peer stands up at 
fisty-cuffs with the brawler in the sacred cause of 
altar, hearth, and throne. And the respectable 
middle man, averse from scenes of strife, and prefer- 
ring not the din of heated crowds to the snug bosom 
of his family, will yet dare, in the election hall, to 
front the popular storm of laughter and imprecation, 



110 ENTHUSIASM. 

and earn renown in ayoucliing his passionate fidelity 
to opinion, at cost of penance in a torn coat, and 
giving proof of his prowess even in the rabble's den. 
It has no choice of profession. The minister and 
the tide-imiter^ the physiologist and the fiddler, the 
gladiator and the bookworm, the poet and the mer- 
chant, the sportsman and the beggar, the cook and 
the coachman, the philosopher and the yeterinary snr- 
geon, all and more than these, though motley to the 
view, and however alien in their several vocations, 
may nevertheless be united by a consanguinity — one 
generic touch of nature which proclaims them of a 
common kindred. The financier looks a very petri- 
faction when absorbed in his frigorific lucubrations, 
but in applying them or their results to the practical 
objects of his enthusiasm, may, in the transfiguration, 
pass for a provincial tragedian or a romantic primo 
huffo. The naturalist, punctilious in the assortment 
of his specimens and the preservation of his appa- 
ratus, yet when the volcanic spark is kindled and the 
heat is upon him, will, in the explosion of his enthu- 
siasm, scatter, like lava, into disorder his infinite 
implements of illustration, and swamp at a blow the 
whole economy of his laboratory. Imagine a " tide- 
waiter,'' ex officio^ encompassed with the paraphernalia 
of ship-loading and cargo-'' guaging,"' with clasped 



ENTHUSIASM. Ill 

liands lauding the invisible power which yet gave 
him to gaze on the rainbow then irradiating the ex- 
panse immediately over the West India Docks ! (wit- 
nessed, and cherished in curious recollection.) Did 
not obsolete " Charley " use to confess, in the energy^ 
with which he vociferated at intervals, his ardentia 
verha^ touching the stars or the hour, or the meteor - 
graphy of the night — " of other days " — that a more 
vital agency than the mere '•'feeling of his business " 
was requisite to preserve him from the trance-io^Tit 
embraces of Morpheus ? " There's reason in the 
roasting of eggs," — but the hero of the spit will tell 
you, that he too owns to a yet warmer influence in 
the exercise of his art, elevating him far above the 
shallow epicures for whom he caters, and who, unable 
scientifically to embrace or confute his culinary theo- 
ries, are content with the carnal honour of devouring 
or demolishing them in effigy. " Jarvie " needs no 
advocacy but the redundant eloquence of his counte- 
nance to attest the animating spirit within Mm. 
The sportsman — on a chance voyage, when the vessel 
has struck and all is given for lost — bewails the 
license of Fate that, handing him to the pilotage 
of Charon, denies him the reprieve of one season 
more ; when, struck by the supernatural force of his 
despair, his heart of flint ignites, and he heaves im- 



112 ENTHUSIASM. 

passioned farewells to his friends, human and canine. 
Nor doubt that the poor supplicant, grateful for the 
alms which in a needy hour enable him to appease 
the pang of hunger, or on a pitiless night to " stop 
a gap to keep the cold away," can invoke blessings 
on his benefactor with an enthusiasm as viyid as the 
sense of alleviation which human charity procures 
him. 

Even in the very driest pursuits, or what we stig- 
matize as such, omnivorous enthusiasm can find its 
choicest aliment. See the old pilgrim, once the 
devotee, since experienced in care, and at length 
palled with a hard-earned but weary life of undig- 
nified ease, seeking refuge from satiety and a relumi- 
nation of his dormant flame, in a posthumous ordeal 
of mathematics, rhapsodizing in a logarithm, or 
steaming in a hot-bed of cube-root. Or survey the 
records over which his supplementary heart delights 
to pore, and read his superscription to the title-page 
of a ponderous blue bulk of repulsive " Evidence " 
or Elucidation, Herels food for meditation even to 
madness ! 

The appreciation even of virtue (what worthier 
object of enthusiasm?) involves not its possession. A 
nondescript may have a more enthusiastic conception 
of glory than the hero of a hundred fights ; and com- 



ENTHUSIASM. 113 

mensiirate in the same breast with the quick pulse of 
cowardice, may dwell the lively and hearty admiration 
of its opposite. Neither are the talent and the taste 
for a pursuit essentially concomitant ; as the studio 
will prove in the case of your impotent hut enthusiastic 
grappler with difficulty. Neither disappointment, 
nor monotony, nor disgust, would seem to have mode- 
rated his strange aspirations, nor dulled the edge of 
his fanatical husbandry. On he plods through fog 
and fire, a sensitive salamander, vowing he luxuriates 
where he only seems to rave, leading a life of conge- 
nial purgatory, and fulfilling his eccentric destiny 
under stimulus of a vague faith in the indestruc- 
tibility of his passion, to which he dedicates every 
function of his sensorium and every pore in his 
body. 



114 DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 



DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

For cultivating patience, there is nothing like the 
society of disagreeable people. The worst amongst 
them are the ill-tempered, afiflicted with an instinct 
of nausea which acidulates the entire man, and gives 
him a morbid energy for cavilling at all visible and 
invisible things. Not a coat or a boot ever fitted 
him. His tradesmen all play him false, from a 
corporate grudge against him, the source of which it 
vexes him that he cannot di\dne. His domestic 
economy is all sixes and sevens — undiscovered cre- 
vices, conjectures of insecurity, impending dilapida- 
tions, and outbreaks of menial disloyalty, float in his 
exceptions imagination with all the exuberance of 
utter fiction. He is a perpetual detector of flaws, 
and purveyor of griev Winces, but, devoid of system or 
principle for the better exercise of his function, he 
shoots beyond the mark, and rectifies nothing, — 
though devoting to the task more than mortal 



DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 115 

assiduity. He is Mr. Killjoy; returns evil for good, 
scratches for smiles, ejections of wi'ath for tenders of 
affection, bellows a reproach hut can only stammer 
a benediction — to which the amen sticks in his throat. 
His amiable moods are scarce as sturgeons, or tender 
beef-steaks. He has no faith in you, so beware his 
faculty of misinterpretation, for he mistakes abandon 
for vulgarity, suspects a double meaning when you 
record a fact, and a personal sneer where you are 
only trying for his soul's good to titillate his spleen, 
and clarify the murky atmosphere around him. He 
never congratulates; be your success what it may, he 
has never a word for you. He frets at an inad- 
vertence, and bears a gross assault with more resig- 
nation than a trivial offence. There is no legislating 
for his case. His weapon of crimination is whetted 
in his own juices, and, all else failing, he will fetch a 
bone of contention from his own anatomy. Does the 
foul fiend possess him ? or whence is all this ? We 
know he is given to strange diet, and preys much 
upon potted meats, stewed crudities, negus, chocolate, 
and sour-krouts ; but yet there's something more 
than natural about him, if philosophy or surveillance 
could but find it out. 

On the other hand, there are some who are dis- 
agreeable from an excess of amiable feeling and good- 



116 DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

humour, which if not duly tempered with ^discretion 
offend like cant. They are too adhesive and depen- 
dent, with them virtue's vitality is endearment, they 
carry out ad ahsurdum the theory of fraternisation ^ 
and positively love their neighbours more than 
themselves. They will neglect their interest and 
reputation, compromise truth, and suffer indignity 
for your especial pleasure, shake hands inordinately, 
and aver themselves your hyper-affectionate friends, 
when all you require is that they behave themselves 
like sensible people. It is a sad truth, that con- 
stancy seldom accompanies this temperament. The 
mucilaginous heart congeals, or it consumes in its own 
heat — and its ashes are baleful. Again, good- 
humour is a snare and a nuisance, when indulged 
without moderation. Th^ jolly club abjure all dis- 
tinctions of time and occasion, would epigramize on 
a convict, parody the Decalogue, or sing at grave- 
making. Their perceptions of reality are thus ob- 
scured, life's phenomena whirl and whiz about their 
long ears, and its drama must be all carnival. They 
have the sense of enjoyment vivid but neat — they 
realise a perpetual g^.are — have no idea of con- 
trasts — no perspective — imagination is absorbed in 
humour — the scene in which they move is flat but 
radiant, and this makes them happy ; forgetful, poor 



DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 117 

tilings ! tliat they have no residue of oil for their 
lamps when these shall begin to flicker in the socket : 
wherefore their decadence when it conies is dread 
and desolate. For they become topers ; and yet the 
toper has a heart Aye, so large a one, that it in- 
vades the seat of conscience ; or so warm, that the 
modest temperature of reason cannot consist with it, 
and for the privileges of rational manhood alcohol 
is the universal succedaneum. He first loses his 
memory, and gets in lieu a quickened sense of 
hilarity, — laughs twice where he laughed once, — judg- 
ment then fails him — laughs thrice ; then temper — 
he laughs no more, but plucks up a spirit, whose 
fevered conflicts undermine the energies that remain. 
Disease grows by what it feeds on ; he becomes a 
pest, a disgrace, droops, pines^ still hobnobbing, till 
death snuffs his candle. 

Then there are the ill-manneredf raternity, some 
venial, yet all very disagreeable beings. To a gentle- 
man with a bad cough, it may be left optional with 
him to come abroad or stay at home till he's cured. 
But stentorian chatterers, remorseless disputants and 
inexorable snorers, abound in places into which 
they ought not to be admissible. To receive an 
overture of civility with marked coldness, is not 
only ungrateful but cruel. Swearing in any company 



118 DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

aboveground onglit to be made sbameful. Staring 
should be looked to as a faulty excusable but in mad- 
men or yaletudinarians. A dull bost has no right to 
call his friends about him. Fidgety bachelors are 
unpardonable. Loye-couples, either before, or soon 
after marriage, are often disagreeable, treating all 
beside as supernumeraries without the magic ring that 
circumscribes their chaste mutualities ; they taunt, 
upbraid, recriminate, confess, and make it up with 
one another ad nauseam! Contradiction, flat con- 
tradiction is loathsome ; indiyiduals there are, who 
were never guilty of an act of unqualified acquiescence 
in their lives. Unseasonable allusions to private 
affairs — even the gratuitous mentioning of your 
dearest kindred to such as strangers to them are 
without invidiousness justified in not caring to hear 
about them — are barbarous. Lord Chesterfield has 
overlooked a little fault which may be mentioned 
mth advantage. Many worthy persons have a habit 
in conversation, of looking at your nose, or other part 
of the face, instead of at your eyes, as though they 
were (and so they must b^) partially employed in 
scanning your features, instead of appreciating your 
sagacity : and be the former ever so unexceptionable, 
the solecism is a very disagreeable one. The vis-a-vis 
is a delicacy. Cutting is an expedient foully abused, 



DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 119 

but it is a whole art. Impudence is hardly worthy 
of mention, it has been pretty considerably starred 
down. 

Neither should politeness be strained. Indeed, 
extreme politeness is extensively known and abomi- 
nated as a veil for contempt. But even with a 
respectful desire to please, beware of smiling ; and 
oh ! if you are a man of business, avoid the zoological 
airs of the j^etit-mattre, however you may have the best 
of the argument about the saltpetre, or the saw-dust, 
or the bill of exchange ; or Cruikshank is abroad, and 
you shall see yom'self one day made a laughing-stock 
for Christmas vacations. And leave that eye-glass 
at home, or serve it as Will Honeycomb did his 
chronometer, rather than dangle it with you to the 
mart, and petrify the shade of Gresham with your 
grimaces, or the real old gentleman himself who is 
going to give you a turn in the Three per Cents, with 
your elastic bow a la Francaise^ done as if upon 
springs, the rebound being more vigorous than the 
jerk. But let the staid and formal also who smile 
not and eschew as evil the semblance of emotion, 
with countenances sealed up for ever, bethink them 
— extremes are said to meet, still waters to be deepest. 
They will be suspected the less for approximating 
nearer to the happy medium. 



120 DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

Some are disagreeable by reason that they are so 
inscrutably clever^ that there is positively no respect- 
ing oneself in their company — no getting a fair start 
with them. Their standards for eyerything are of 
enormous altitude. They mystify and set you at 
defiance, sacrifice truth to display, are better talkers 
than thinkers. They steer clear both of the wrong and 
right side of a question, and keep the startling line ; 
they depreciate things and authorities which we have 
been used to reverence, deride what we admire, and 
perhaps because we admire. They pronounce instead 
of submitting their judgment, and would quell an 
honest dissentient, as a rider a refractory steed, 
by literal gagging. They would unsettle you in 
everything, and there leave you. They are never 
ingenuous, and probably, if they were, would appear 
to have exchanged solidity for candour. They are 
satisfied with their reputation, joined with the delu- 
sive coimction that a short course of sobriety would 
place the whole ocean of truth navigable and pene- 
trable before them. 

Stupid people do often try the patience, not by 
their absolute stupidity, but by their rashness. 
There is no teaching them their place. They ivill 
discourse of great and divine things — as where 
Broadface talks about Byron being a devil of a 



DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 121 

fellow, and Shakespeare a surprising or otlier sort of 
fellow^ and of celebrated contemporaries as trumps ; or 
in otlier moods blurting his impertinences touching 
the hubbubs at Oxford, and the Exchequer office : 
slubbering politics by rote from the text of his 
rabid oracle who drinks his port and flatters his 
vanity, or speculating about the millennium as im- 
perturbably as upon the prognostics of a weather 
almanac. And when these youths push themselves 
into undue influence, as they oftentimes do through 
the defective vigilance of those, many or few, who 
have the power of withholding it from them, they 
become from sheer jDig-headedness, though they may 
be always unknowingly, oppressors of unacknowledged 
merit, and accessories of rogues and villains whose 
craft is equally beyond their discernment. 

Ugly people we will say nothing about, nor hand- 
some ones just now. 

Boasters and liars are abominable : you may give 
them the lie in the face, deep as to the lungs, and 
they take it very quietly. 

Oiiyrosers there cannot be two opinions. Can these 
human tortoises be immortal ? Certain they have a 
smack of eternity about them. Their brain is like 
the digestive organs, in a state of continuous but 



] 22 DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

insensible action. Soporific souls ; is it not a lesson 
of patience to listen to their yams ? 
' But there are disagreeable people whom we cannot 
exactly charge with any of the above peculiarities, 
nor with any indeed. What makes them disagree- 
able to us ? Antipathy. But what is it in them 
that creates the antipathy ? Je ne scais quoi. 



job's comforters. 12c 



JOB'S COMFOETEES. 

An innocent sufferer from a recent commercial dis- 
aster, one of tlie consequences of my misfortune has 
been an extended acquaintance with the fraternity 
rejoicing in the title of " Job's comforters." I hardly 
know why / should pretend to instruct or entertain 
the public, who may be presumed to be as intelligent 
upon the subject of character as I can be, and conse- 
quently quite alive to the peculiarities of the uncom- 
fortable cousins I am speaking of ; so I will merely 
observe in apology for this intrusion that the subject 
has for me, in some degree, the attraction at least of 
novelty. 'Tis a cud which I am pleased for the nonce 
to chew. 

Permit me to ask you, respected reader — but in 
all probability you have, at some time or other, had 
recourse to the counsel of active-minded bodies who, 
when called upon for the exercise of their function, 
exhibit a laudable interest proportionate to the exi- 
gencies of the occasion, but combine with it a com- 



124 job's comforters. 

mensurate spirit of opposition to every possible view 
wliicli your own ingenuity can devise for meeting 
such exigencies, and averting 'the crises which they 
may seem to bode. Their procedure appears to be, 
first, to enter with true melodramatic intensity into 
the case, professedly to understand its bearings, and 
valiantly to tackle its difficulties ; and then, mirahile 
dictu! to provide that, neither by hook nor by crook, 
nor by any other means or appliances, shall you sus- 
tain your point against them, and that, inch by inch, 
you be checked in your moves and foiled in your 
efforts, however apropos in themselves, and however 
desirable and interesting the end they are proposed to 
accomplish. You cannot condescend to yield rational 
conviction to oracular dogmatism ; your impenetra- 
bility is rebuked with martial energy ; so your com- 
forter shrugs his shoulders, buttons his pockets, and 
leaves you. 

For instance, a concatenation of events connected 
with any of the multifarious interests which flesh is 
heir to, brings about a juncture demanding the exer- 
cise of promptitude, judgment, and co-operation ; the 
immediate necessity is for a movement of one Idnd or 
other, and you see that, whichever course be adopted, 
a sacrifice must be made. The comforter arrives, 
punctually as the clock strikes, looks as neat as a 



job's comforters. 125 

wliistle and as cool as a cucumber. It is a congenial 
errand ; determination is on his frontispiece ; lie 
mounts his intellectual spectacles, and plunges at 
once in meclias res. The facts are arrayed at his bid- 
ding, and analysed with statistical precision ; the 
niceties are probed, the contradictions reconciled, and 
the whole superficies of the case mastered with intui- 
tive sagacity. As he warms into the engagement, 
he displays a tenacity, anxiety, and vehemence worthy 
the vitality of the cause ; and in eliciting the data 
which are to influence his counsels, avails himself of 
ample occasion for the display of that species of cou- 
rage especially available in " the pm'suit of knowledge 
under difficulties." Your comforter's confoi-mation 
and yours chance to be different, and so you happen 
to view matters in a different light from him. His 
characteristic inveteracy is abetted by a partial notion 
of your wi'ong-headedness, and the result is antago- 
nism, sharp, untiring, and fierce. The force of your 
appeals adds strength to his resistance — your impor- 
tunity increases his implacability ; he is very sorry, 
but the fact is, he is having a " set-to" with himself, 
in which you are but tributory, and on the cat-and- 
mouse principle you get neutralised at last. 

What a compound is this being ! With everything 
to instigate to a practical appreciation of his abun- 



126 job's comforters. 

dant opportunity for playing the honoured part of 
" guide, philosopher, and friend," and of earning the 
reputation, if not realising the luxury, of loving his 
neighbour as himself, he puts on the strong armour 
of combativeness, and surmounts it with the panoply 
of the champion. Your entire and perfect trust is 
invoked as with a trumpet-blast, you are prostrate 
beneath his glittering banner, and might so continue 
but for the too frequent application of the " bare 
bodldn," with which your comforter administers a 
quietus whenever you dare to insinuate such heresy 
as that your soul is your own, or that two opinions 
are better than one. 

To those who are addicted to curious speculation, 
such as upon the conceivable number of angels capa- 
ble of dancing simultaneously on the point of a needle 
— what may be the favourite recreations of oysters, 
and whether that sedentary animal really ever is 
crossed in love — or what the essential difference 
between a human jackanapes and a zoological monkey 
— to such inquirers I recommend the employment of 
a leisure night (the best time for meditation upon 
mysteries) in accounting for the undeniable fact that 
such a heartless thing as a Job's comforter, despite 
the elements and other potentialities, gets his blood 
to circulate sufficiently to make him your warm 



job's comforters. 127 

friend, can perambulate the byways of this mortal 
life without further prejudice than that of intercept- 
ing the dews of heayen, whose descent might other- 
wise convert even the valley of humiliation into a 
fruitful spot, and can wear the painless aspect which 
the countenance is traditionally held to derive from 
the pure fountain of a good conscience — in fine, 
towards furnishing forth what solution he may of 
this psychological enigma, and ^pronouncing in which 
category of imaginable sinners our philosophy may 
dream of allocating that most unsur]3assable of hum- 
bugs — a JoVs comforter. 



128 PARTICULAR PEOPLE. 



PARTICULAR PEOPLE. 

Some people, the bane of respectable society, are 
so very particular with everything and with every- 
body that their better qualities are altogether lost 
sight of. Two minutes' conversation with them is 
quite enough at a time if you would come off un- 
scathed from the encounter ; and then the safest topic 
is the weather, or the Crystal Palace, as these lead to 
nothing personal or disputatious, which were dan- 
gerous staple in such company. It is hazardous at 
any time to ask particular people questions, or to 
smile to them with any approach to familiarity. 
Your best passport to their favour is ceremony and 
silence ; not an impenetrable, but a deferential silence, 
yielding them the initiative, and so exalting them in 
their own estimation, until pampered vanity warm them 
into something genial, and they draw in their prickly 
horns, and for the nonce pass muster. If you think 
to treat particular people as you do people in general, 
only try it. Where an average person answers your 



PARTICULAR PEOPLE. 129 

question, a particular one vouclisafes only an evasion 
or toss of the head ; or if anything more explicit, it 
is curt, acrid, and warns you to desist. He flounces 
at you by anticipation, resents your most innocent 
misconceptions, leaves you abruptly and in dudgeon, 
rather than appreciate your joke or your candour ; and 
unless you be very particular, never forgives you for 
an unintentional offence as long as memory holds its 
seat. Therefore two minutes* conference is lengthened 
enough for such people. But to attest the utter imprac- 
ticability of particular people, you should have dealing 
with them, l^o need to he particular — anything in 
the beaten way of friendship, business, or pleasure, 
will serve the purpose of developing their wondrous 
tenacity. A bargain, or a loan (not pecuniary), or an 
assignation, or a slight misunderstanding, either will 
do to magnetize your man, and bring you and his 
humour together in odious contact. There is literally 
no dealing with "particular" people from their de- 
murring, contravening propensity and disposition. 
They are without catholicity or the spirit of amal- 
gamation. 

Their sensibilities are brittle, affections punctilious, 
sympathies intolerant, and even their very gratitude 
is statistical. They ought never to marry, nor indeed 
be permitted to mingle in multifarious life. They 



130 PARTICULAR PEOPLE. 

ought, male and female, each to form a club and live 
together respectively in monastic exclusion for the 
term of their unnatural lives from intercourse with 
any, save their own particular community ; or, until 
sated of their nice way of life — with its counterpoise 
and crucible philosophy, its picnics of tid-bit and 
verjuice, the monotony of sex, and the dreadness of 
despair — they cry for qug-rter, or for better quarters, 
and promise, if received back again into the world, to 
waive their fractional moot points, live less to them- 
selves, and not be so " particular." 



THE WIGGIXS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 131 



THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 

After many and repeated inyitations and promises 
on either side, it was at length agi'eed, vrith my 

friend Tom Gossett, that Christmas of should 

not be suffered to pass without my paying a visit to 
his recently adopted domicile in the vicinity of that 

pretty village of E , which those at all acquainted 

with the county of Devonshire can hardly fail to 
have visited. I had often looked forward with plea- 
sure to this promised relaxation from the turmoil of 
professional life, and the grateful exchange of the 
exciting cares and responsibilities of business for the 
luxurious independence of a week's holiday in that 
delightful locality, combined with the additional en- 
joyment of the society of one of the most accomplished 
and amiable of men. Tom was one of my oldest and 
most intimate friends, and his wife was just the sort 
of person to make such a guest as myself happy and 
comfortable under her husband's roof. 



132 THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 

The day at length arrived when I felt myself at 
liberty to take my departure, and, on the 23d of 
December, of the year above-mentioned, I had the 
satisfaction of presenting myself at the door of my 
good host, and was speedily confronted with the 
family party, consisting of no more, in fact, than my 
old friend, his wife, and a young person who was in- 
troduced to me as Tom's nephew. 

" That lad," said Tom to me in a whisper, as he 
showed me to my apartment, — " that lad whom you 
saw in the drawing-room " 

" Your nephew ? " 

" Yes — he has, he has indeed " 

"What?" 

"Genius!" 

Well it's no worse, thought I ; but was forthwith 
brought again under the infliction of my friend's 
mysterious revelations touching the singular endow- 
ments oi his protege. Too tired after my journey on 
the one hand, and too content with anticipating the 
grateful repose that awaited me on the other, to enter 
with any peculiar interest into the merits of this 
rara avis, my demonstrations were confined to the 
conventional style of response which a helpless spirit 
of resignation to the will of my interpreter alone 
could enable me to adopt. 



THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 133 

We descended to the drawing-room, and were very 
soon summoned to dinner, dming which ceremony I 
had an opportunity of observing, among other things > 
the characteristics of the youthful prodigy in behalf 
of whom my passive sympathies had already been 
enlisted by his admiring uncle. It was very soon 
observable, that one subject, and one alone, en- 
gaged the thoughts and feelings of this interesting 
scion. It was music — or rather the art of ' ' fiddling," 
with its concomitant pedantries. The boy was evi- 
dently a pet with his indulgent relatives, and they 
not only countenanced to excess his aspirations after 
the artistic excellence which he appeared to regard as 
the summum honum of life, but were betrayed into 
the error too common with enthusiastic parents and 
guardians, of so far misinterpreting his promise as to 
confound the restlessness of undisciplined boyhood 
with the throes of incipient genius, and to view the 
pertinacious ardour with which he clung to his in- 
fatuation as evidence of undoubted inspiration. The 
consequence was that the most unrestrained license 
was accorded to this youth in the indulgence of his 
particular, or rather absorbing pursuit. As dinner 
advanced, I discovered that the scion, as we must call 
him, had been just imported into his present enviable 
quarters, in consequence of an invitation which had 



134 THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 

been sent to my friend and his estimable partner by 
an inimitable couple residing in the vicinity, couched 
in the following terms : 

" Mr. and Mrs. Wiggins request the pleasure of 
Mr. and Mrs. Gossett's company at a musical soireej 
on the 29th instant, at eight o'clock precisely." 

The inyitation was accompanied by a private note 
from Mrs. Wiggins to the lady, which ran as follows : 

^^ My dear Mrs. Gossett, — You have often heard 
of our musical soirees ; you will now have an oppor- 
tunity of appreciating them. We do not ask any 
but musical people, notwithstanding they are so few ; 
but I tell you candidly we shall this time surpass 
ourselves ; for the selection will not merely be of the 
most classical description, but the performers will 
all be very superior. Our great Kanteler is coming 
(this, however, amongst ourselves). By the by, would 
you like to bring your nephew with you ? I mean 
the one with such precocious musical talent. We 
shall be delighted to see him. 

** Believe me, yours sincerely, 

" Lizzy Wiggins." 

Upon this hint it appears the prodigy was duly 
summoned, and as duly arrived, and such was the 
occasion of the young gentleman's presence within 



THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 135 

the hospitable walls which had just received me as 
an inmate for at least six days to come. 

I am thankful in being able to avow myself one of 
those persons who are so happily constituted as seldom 
to be enslaved or distracted by any predominating 
train of thought when in the society of others, and, 
consequently, was enabled at this moment to listen to 
the conversation which, by reason of the presence 
of the scion, bore chiefly on the all-absorbing topic 
of music. It will not be necessary to detail that 
conversation, — suffice it, that it embraced allusions 
which were new to me, and appeared to possess little 
interest for one of the uninitiated. Of course, having 
been tolerably familiarized with the formulae of ordi- 
nary society, and of musical entertainments in the 
metropolis, I had heard about Mozart and Beethoven, 
cum multis aliis of the same illustrious fraternity, — 
in fact, possess a fair average acquaintance with mat- 
ters musical, so far as they are expounded by our 
popular caterers to the requirements of a superficial 
public, have a tolerable ear, can join in a chorus, and 
have experienced the legitimate unbiassed sensations 
on listening to the infelicities of a bad vocalist or 
fiddler, although not identifying the cause of such 
sensation with the analytic skill of a connoisseur. 
But the technicalities connected with composition. 



136 THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 

and the paraphernalia of the concert-room, the strange 
investiture of the choice passages with a meaning 
and intelligence which I had not only never been 
guilty of imputing, but had never before heard im- 
puted, to those respectable phenomena, the contra- 
rieties of taste, and the heating discussions and dis- 
sensions arising therefrom, and above all — But this 
is anticipating. 

The day arrived — the evening approached. I^ of 
course, was to be one of the party. Tom was un- 
usually erratic ; his wife was equally unsettled, and 
the scion was like a ball of wildfire. Of necessity, 
everything went wrong during the day ; there was 
an utter suspension of domestic routine ; the cere- 
mony of breakfast lasted, with sundry intermissions, 
upwards of two hours ; dinner was a perfect farce, — - 
in fact, I was an isolated being, and thrown upon my 
own resources during the entire day. At seven o'clock 
we were summoned by the appearance at the door of 
a snug vehicle, which was exactly large enough to 
hold four, and then off we were whirled to the cottage 
of the reno^vned Wigginses. 

" Mr. and Mrs. Gossett," proclaimed the servant, 
and in we all walked into a spacious room, presenting 
a collection of neat and respectable-looking individuals, 
some of whose appearance may be cursorily described. 



THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 137 

Our valued host aud hostess, Mr. and Mrs. Wiggins, 
claim precedence in this enumeration. Wiggins was 
a round, shortish, florid, smiling, nice old fellow, 
presenting an exterior of almost professional respect- 
abihty, comprising the characteristic blackness and 
whiteness, and tightness and cleanness, with, in addi- 
tion, an amiable and shining naturalness, individually 
and particularly his own. The temperament of our 
■friend was of the most genial description, presenting 
an attractiveness which only the most unaffected 
simplicity of character, and the most exuberant good- 
ness of heart, can, with other minor combinations, 
secure. His fault was that he was an amateur 
violin-player. 

Mrs. Wiggins was one of those persons who please 
everybody, — in fact, just the sort of character that 
her husband deserved as a wife. Like him, she had 
devoted herself assiduously to the cultivation of 
musical art, and was, as may be supposed, to officiate 
as thepianiste of this eventful evening. Mrs. Wiggins 
was stout, but winning. 

The salon was arranged with all the needful appli- 
ances for an amateur concert. The pianoforte was 
turned inside out, and was surrounded by a number 
of musical desks, garnished each with wax-candles, 
and a chair attached, upon or against which lay or 



138 THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 

stood a musical instniment of one description or 
other, together comprising violins of the required 
different sizes, flutes, clarionet, &c. The first thing 
the scion did, on entering the room, was to go and 
fumble about among the fiddles : he flew to them 
with instinctive impetuosity, and was soon imbedded 
in the little orchestra. The party further consisted 
of Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, the former tall, thin, and 
intellectual; the latter an animated pincushion in 
appearance, but possessing, as Mrs. Wiggins informed 
my friends, " great soul." Mr. Simpson was to take 
the second violin. Major Starkie and his daughter 
next presented themselves : the major was one of 
those benevolent people who are always forward to 
impart edification to all sorts of their fellow-creatures, 
and, without pretending himself to be a performer, 
made up for the deficiency by extemporising verbally 
and volubly upon the subject uppermost in the 
general mind upon this occasion : " instructor-gene- 
ral " was written on his brow, and with the manner 
of a gentleman and the heart of a wiseacre, he took 
me aside, soon after the introduction, and conferred 
some oracular communications which I was consci- 
entiously bound to respect, inasmuch as they were 
upon the various points referred to corroborative 
of the stereotyped dogmas of the day. His daughter 



139 

was a perfect specimen of the English lady, — quiet, 
graceful, observant, and conversible, and evidently 
qualified to enjoy to its utmost extent the intellectual 
repast in store for us. 

Mrs. Wiggins was indefatigable in dispensing the 
needful agremens among her guests, especially to our 
party, to whom she was remarkably solicitous in con- 
veying an adequate appreciation of the several per- 
sonages assembled. Mr. Wiggins himself had enough 
to do in superintending the order of the entertain- 
ments. Our revered host was to be the Viola of the 
evening : the violoncello was undertaken by Mr. 
Scott Bell, and the flute by IVIr. Pinkerton. 

The general attention was directed to the per- 
formers, all of whom, however, were in a state of 
suspense and uneasiness in consequence of the non- 
appearance of the first violin, Mr. Kanteler, the 
most important character. At length, after some 
considerable delay, the lion of the evening was an- 
nounced, and in walked the great Kanteler. His 
entrance was the signal for general recognition, and 
he was at once hailed as the central functionary 
of the musical ciixle. He was a spare, middle- 
sized man, with great apparent elaboration of cos- 
tume. His head was well shaped, visage thin — hair 
the same — rather pock-marked, large goggle eyes^ 



140 THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 

the merest modicum of languid wliisker, underliung 
mouth, long chin ; and " the inheritor himself," en- 
compassed in a blue coat with brass buttons, protect- 
ing an embroidered waistcoat, and an interior conflu- 
ence of costly embellishment in quality of studs, 
chains, and divers intricate appendages, betokening 
the eccentricity of taste which usually marks the 
provincial lion : his lower proportions, which, under 
the restrictive authority of modern fashion were 
denied the privilege of illustrating the gentleman's 
taste in decorative art, were, nevertheless, punctilio 
itself ; and his cravat was a perfect picture — white, 
inflexible, and of uncompromising depth, and conse- 
quently height, to the extent of invading the lower 
extremities of his ears, each of which curled up from 
the encroachment with an effect entirely unique. 
His most remarkable peculiarity, however, was the 
breadth and prominence of his wristbands, which bore 
undeniable evidence to the daring inveteracy with 
which he had equipped himself for the all-important 
role assigned to him by his devoted compeers. He 
walked up to Mrs. Wiggins, and seated himself beside 
her, when a series of whispering mutualities ensued, 
marked by irrepressible emphasis and anxiety on the 
one part, and the most imperturbable and dignified 
coolness on the other. As the lady poured into his 



THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 141 

ears tlie burthen of all lier secret solicitudes at that 
critical moment, and as the depth of feeling with 
which her musical soul was preparing to be agitated 
was apparent in the gentle undulations of her 
respected breast, the great Kanteler maintained the 
immoveable aspect which he wore on first entering 
the room. At the termination of this portentous 
tete-a-tete J Major Starkie walked up to the accom- 
plished man, and addressed him in a delightful tone 
of confraternity, which Kanteler returned with the 
same stolid serenity as before. The Major indulged 
his propensity to impart knowledge in his interview 
with Kanteler, not to the extent of presuming to 
oflfer anything acceptable to the latter in the way of 
connoisseur ship, which would, in all probability, have 
been received with withering disdain, but contented 
himself with at once asserting his originality, and 
exempting the lion from any wound to his vanity, by 
simply discoursing to him on the subject of some 
newly-imported fiddlestrings, which a friend of his 
had, as cigar-smokers often confess to you, just 
obtained with great difficulty and by very particular 
favour. The Major's daughter then accosted Kanteler, 
upon which the latter rose, and a similar abortive 
attempt on the part of that lady was made to " draw 
him out." The mind was evidently pre-occupied ; 



142 THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 

and a quiet signal from Mr. Wiggins withdrew him 
to the orchestra, where he was forthwith installed as 
leader. Whereupon commenced the tuning business, 
introduced with a series of whimp'rings and grunt- 
ings of the short duration desirable by reason of the 
extreme agony they appeared to express, and assimi- 
lating at last to what might be expected from a 
chorus of guinea-pigs trying to get up a rational 
conversation. The word was given by the scion, who 
stood behind Kanteler for the purpose of turning over 
the leaves of the " master " as occasion required. 

The first burst was the signal for the deadest 
silence among the audience, and the most lively 
noisiness on the part of the performers. It was the 
first out-and-out thing of the kind I had ever wit- 
nessed, and I must in candour avow that the effect of 
the first piece was to excite me irresistibly to laughter : 
especially as the constant pattering of the digital 
department, with its graduated tones, first from the 
first violin, with its intermittent scream, then from 
his junior brother the second violin, then with the 
sonorous accents of uncle tenor (Wiggins), and capped 
by the climax of old grandfather grumbletonian, 
whose freaks of ponderous agility had the effect of 
representing the violoncello, to my unpractised obser- 
vation, as one of the funniest old fellows I had ever 



THE WIGGIXS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 143 

met with. Tlie performers seemed, I thouglit, all 
to understand eacli other, and managed to inspire 
the audience, at least, with a due sense of the untiring 
perseverance displayed by the composer in chasing 
an idea in a circle whenever he got hold of one. The 
finale to the first quintette went off with exceedingly 
audible eclat ^ and the performers, one and all (except- 
ing the leader), looked pretty considerably burnished 
up by their exertions. JVIr. Wiggins smoothed his 
glowing frontispiece, and looked for all the world 
like a good boy who had had a pommelling and felt 
the better for it ; there was a happy, tearful expres- 
sion which implied exultation at having confronted 
danger, and joy at having honourably escaped from 
it : he looked first at Kanteler and smiled, but that 
obdm'ate hero was sympathy-proof still. The look 
went round to the others, and was by them conge- 
nially met, especially by Pinkerton, who feeling very 
proud of what he had himself achieved, indulged in 
a self-eulogy in shape of a hearty panegyric on the 
efficiency pretended to have been displayed by the 
benign Wiggins. Upon scrutiniziug fui'ther, it was 
apparent that the harmony of the entertainment was 
not altogether free from alloy, llr. Simpson, the 
second violin, somehow or other, in his executive 
capacity, had had the misfortune to forfeit the con- 



144 THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 

fidence of Kanteler ; the melancliolj fact was evinced 
by the peculiar flush visible on Simpson's cheek. 
Unlike the glow of honourable acquittal which gar- 
nished the countenances of the others, it clearly evi- 
denced that consuming feeling of heat which a sense 
of shame produces : he attempted to speak to the 
leader, but a guilty falter impeded every effort ; 
whilst, on the other hand, the offended chief kept 
him inexorably at bay. An interval then followed, 
during which some low-toned intercommunications 
passed among the amateurs, and some casual inter- 
changes of opinion among the rest of the party. The 
flute went and sat by his sister, an unmarried-looking 
lady, whose first impression on an ordinary mind 
would be 'twere best to have nothing to do with her, 
but who, nevertheless, improved on acquaintance ; for 
I found in her conversation more than I had given 
her credit for, both of amiability and intelligence. I 
was altogether the better for my colloquy with her, 
as it certainly relieved in me a sort of painful feeling 
of incapacity to appreciate the performances of the 
evening as they might deserve ; a feeling which has, 
doubtless, often been experienced by others similarly 
situated to myself. 

The next performance was a duet between Pin- 
kerton and ]Mrs. Wiggins. The lady took her seat 



THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 145 

at the piano, the scion stood at her right, Mrs. 
Simpson (the great soul) at her left, and the shepherd 
in the background with his solitary pipe. The piece 
consisted of a splashing introduction, which seemed 
to illustrate a game of blindman's-buff set to music, 
the one groping after something and never catching 
anything, accompanied by a din and clamour from 
the other, productive of that sort of harmony called 
" singing in the ears," which went far to excuse the 
ineffectiveness of the struggling Mr. P., resulting 
from such very noisy co-operation. Nevertheless, 
some more significant impression was produced. Mrs. 
Simpson, during " the slow movement^" as it was 
called, made a slow movement with her head from 
ear to ear, and looked like a person in all the ecstasies 
of weeping without the indecorous intrusion of a tear, 
forcibly illustrating the sentiment that 

** To some, the meanest flute that blows 

Gives thoughts that lie almost too deep for tears.'* 

The scion went fiercely to work with turning over 
the leaves, and conducted that operation with a sin- 
gleness of purpose gracefully tempered with an 
affecting gurgle or two wherever the finer emotions 
were apjDealed to. Major Starkie, too, found some- 
thing in the performance to be excited about, and 



146 THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 

showers of compliments were lavished upon both 
artists at the conclusion. Mr. Wiggins looked nicer 
now than ever ; his general pleasing expression gain- 
ing the accession of a new charm indicating the con- 
jugal pride which he felt at witnessing the success 
achieved by his wife, and the warm acknowledgment 
which it secured. Nothing particular occurred until 
the subsequent performance ; the only thing that 
excited my notice being the fpequent furtive glances 
cast at Kanteler by the disgraced Simpson, who 
looked so very much as if he couldn't help it, that I 
really couldn't help looking very much at the cruel 
oppressor, hoping, by the fixedness of my gaze, and 
what I flattered myself to be the severity of my frown, 
to elicit from him something like an indication of 
remorse for the inhumanity he had exhibited, — but 
no, the stern heart was impenetrable. 

The next invocation was the scion on the vioHn. 
This outpouring presented the concentrated essence of 
the young genius's moral, intellectual, and sentient 
energies. The mechanical faculties of the brain, 
the sympathy, such as it was, which essayed to inter- 
pret the train of thought or strain of rhapsody, or 
combination of both, or of neither, such as they might 
be, — the fervour of youthful ambition — the misgiv- 
ing intensity of the tyro — were all and each displayed 



THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 147 

here in the full tide of operation. My friend Gossett 
and his wife were, of couse, charmed ; and, so far as the 
plaudits of the general company could contribute, the 
scion's success was complete ; but a smile from Kan- 
teler would have transcended them all — one kind 
look, one encouraging glance from the icy autocrat, 
would have ^'outweighed" a ''whole theatre of 
others." The youngster was standing in a misty 
state of involuntary self-gratulation by Major Starlde, 
who happened to be speaking to Kanteler and said, 
" That youngster can play." " No, he can't," was the 
answer, " and never will. See," added he, with 
crushing contempt, " see how he places his thumb 
upon the neck." Unhappily the youth overheard 
this ; the consequence was, he was a piping ninepin 
for the evening. No more turning over leaves for 
Kanteler — 

** No more his soul a charm m fiddling finds, 
Fiddling hath charms alone for peaceful minds.' ' 

To relieve his bursting heart, he imparted this to 
Simpson, to whom it afforded evident relief. Com- 
panionship in sorrow at once elicits and destroys the 
power of suffering : Simpson's growing vindictiveness 
towards his persecutor assumed a less selfish character ; 
he forgot his own ignominy in his friend's, and from 



148 THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 

being the victim of Kanteler lie had now risen to be 
the champion of the scion. The performances pro- 
ceeded, and instead of producing that enjoyment 
which is, or should be, the object of such assemblages, 
it was evident that disappointments, frustrations, 
indignities, wanton opposition, '' faint praise," and 
other acrimonious niceties, too numerous to specify, 
were here invading the musical sanctum to the destruc- 
tion of that harmony which in a social reunion ought 
always to exist ; more especially where the pretensions 
are really all of one class, as on this occasion ; for, as I 
learned from Miss Pinkerton, in a second interchange 
of ideajg, just before the finale, this Kanteler was, as 
a violin-player, vert/ much beloio mediocrity! He pos- 
sessed, it appeared, great flexibility, and could do 
some of the most " difficult tricks " on the instrument. 
He could make a great noise in lieu of extracting a 
fine tone, finger with rapidity, but not with articulate- 
ness, could stop in time but not in tune, and could 
distinguish between the adagio and allegro better than 
between the sublime and the ridiculous, minute not 
comprehensive, precise without soul or imagination, 
his interpretation of the effusions of a composer 
worthy of better celebration might without disparage- 
ment be compared to the far-famed poulterer's de- 
scription of the phoenix, '-'• It was green and yellow. 



THE WIGGIXS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 149 

red and blue. He did not let us off for a single 
feather." 

By the time we sat down to supper I was fairly 
beaten. We had been for four mortal hours listening, 
as I at last gathered, to villanously bad music, com- 
pelled to sit still and not speak a word, excepting at 
lucid intervals ; witness the very inharmonious exhi- 
bitions of jealousy, temper, and pride, which had so 
sadly marred what I had anticipated as a scene of 
rare enjoyment, — and all for what? For the indul- 
gence (so I reasoned), for the indulgence of a mania 
which is unprofitable enough when confined to the 
infected few, but when regarded in connexion with 
the silent sufferings of thousands of unwilling vota- 
ries, such as I was at this Wiggins's musical party, 
may be emphatically pronounced to be a grievance 
and a pest. 

At supper, however, I at last came out, and glad 
enough to do it, pent up as I had been all the even- 
ing. " Throw music to the dogs," was the irresistible 
impulse ; and we went to 't like French falconers. 
The laugh went round, and only halted when it came 
to Kanteler, who was a sort of thin Dombey, sus- 
tained in his infamous supremacy, not by any inherent 
merit, in himself, but by the blindness of his devotees, 
by the confounded infatuation of those deluded ama- 



150 THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 

teurs, — ^^ Were there no stones in heaven but what 
serve for the thunder ? " My utmost ingenuity was 
taxed, and severely ; but I hit at last on an expedient 
which succeeded in mollifying the austerities of this 
little emperor. Miss Starkie, the Major's daughter, 
was, as I have before indicated, a charming woman ; 
she sat on my right : Miss Pinkerton, my sometime 
confidante^ on the left ; the latter hinted to me that 
Kanteler was, beneath his waistcoat, a great admirer 
of the other lady. I soon ascertained that my fair 
neighbour on my right was of opinion with myself 
that Kanteler deserved to be eminently gibbeted for 
his aristocratic, unkind demeanour towards his satel- 
lites that evening. Through the infallible aid of 
champagne, under my most prudential administration, 
and the most skilful performance of the kind on 
the part of Miss Starkie, " ever witnessed on any 
stage," the result was the gradual conversion of a 
stone idol, or a Tussaud figure, into a man. Female 
influence had at length succeeded in probing the 
breast which the strains of melody had never softened, 
and in awakening the solitary chord which it appeared 
was only accessible to the magical finger of Miss 
Starkie ; to say nothing of the Bacchanalianism to 
which Mr. Kanteler had been subjected through my 
instrumentality, the efficacy of which, if such there 



THE WIGGINS'S MUSICAL PARTY. 151 

were, was, at all events, greatly subordinate to that 
more spiritual agency under which our Malyolio 
redivivus exhibited himself in mind, though not in 
stockings, as the abject slave of a merciful, but mis- 
chief-loving woman. 

" At the conversazione ? " whispered Kanteler, as he 
handed his inamorata into her carriage. 

" Yes," answered the lady. 

" Au revoir^^^ minced the melting swain with ineffa- 
ble gi'ace, as the window drew up, and the enchantress 
drove off. 

The party then dispersed. I mounted the box with 
a dreadnought which dear old Wiggins would lend 
me — had one of those choice cigars obtained with 
great difficulty, and by very particular favour — and 
the last thing remembered, as my willing head sought 
forgetfulness on the grateful pillow, was a rifacimiento 
of confused maxims, ending with 

** Sermons in stones, and good in everything/^ 

when off I went like a top, and never awoke until 
half past ten the next day, in the course of which, by 
the by, I had the gratification of receiving an in- 
vitation to IVIrs. Wiggins's approaching conversazione. 



152 OSTENTATION. 



OSTENTATION. 

Ostentation is the effervescence of vanity. Vulgarly 
it flourishes through the media of mansions, equipage, 
dress, and such symbols of wealth and power, for the 
which our votary may consent to the turning of his 
wits the seamy side without, and presenting to a 
scandalised world the spectacle of one whose secret 
passion is display, and secret practice pinching parsi- 
mony ; who will mortify his own to pamper his horse- 
flesh, and can even, under stress of fortune, not to 
speak profanely, stoop to strange contacts, under the 
gaberdine of vicarious ostentation. His lavish ex- 
penditure is not disguised ; but his economical shifts 
are " stuff o' the conscience," and he would have them 
sacred as his thoughts from the world's penetration. 
Occasionally, however, they are detected, which puts 
him upon contrivances, and may contribute to give a 
subtler character to his science of display, in which 
case he indulges it covertly and by stratagem, en- 
snares rather than compels your homage, subdues 



OSTENTATION. 153 

your credulity through your curiosity, and captivates 
your suffrage through the more intricate mazes of 
sinister imposture ; he ceases to appear as an agent, 
and, like the invisible spirit of the Fantoccini, dis- 
poses his materials and conducts his operations with- 
out implicating himself as their director. In conver- 
sation he favours topics least likely to be familiar 
to his company, discussing politics with the juvenile, 
philosophy with the imbecile, mysticism with the 
mechanic, and equity law with a fiddler ; with the 
recluse or the valetudinarian he dilates upon the 
pleasm^es, and with the roue or the humorist upon the 
stern realities, of life. He is ingenious in the dispo- 
sition of visiting-cards upon his mantel-piece, espe- 
cially such as have addi'esses on them — nay, he has 
walked out of his way to get a respectable postmark 
to the envelope of his letter, rather than incur un- 
worthy suspicion as to the place of his residence. 
His casual encounters with more considerable persons 
than himself are frequently premeditated; and on 
being accosted by an inferior, he resents the humilia- 
tion by an extortionate tax on his envy or admiration, 
through the medium of false inuendo or exaggeration. 
His cordiahty en passant with a pedestrian acquaint- 
ance, depends upon whether himself be on foot, or on 
horseback, or in vehicle, adapted to each and all of 



154 OSTENTATION. 

which contingencies he has a graduated scale of salu- 
tation ; indeed so various is the influence of such 
triyialities on his social temperament, that his demea- 
nour towards an individual equally innocent and un- 
conscious of any inequality of merit in himself to 
account for the waywardness of his friend, exposes 
our hero to the imputation of the most antithetical 
qualities which can be conceived to co-exist in the 
same being : good fellow and bashaw, mild and repul- 
sive, cold and warm-blooded — according to circum- 
stances. Tired of his game, finesse at length gives 
place to a method of self-exaltation, still further in 
principle removed from the primitive one of broad 
display, namely, a purely negative mode — aggrand- 
isement through the disparagement of others. His 
one province and talent is universal contempt. The 
process of decomposition has reduced him to the level 
of a mere detractor. Heaven remodel him. 



CONCEITED PEOPLE. 155 



CONCEITED PEOPLE. 

They seem to labour unwittingly under a comfortable 
derangement of their moral and intellectual system. 
Medical analysis might trace it to the hypochron- 
driacal organ. Their countenances are intelligent 
and vivid, but stamped with an expression of insin- 
cerity, and have the peculiarities indicated by the 
epithets sinister and priggish. They have usually 
small eyes. They are not prepossessing, yet they 
attract ; they inspire at first view a deferential anti- 
pathy, and on nearer acquaintance are found to be a 
compound of inconsistencies, of sensibility and impu- 
dence — decorous but vulgar, imaginative but punc- 
tilious, charitable but given to detraction, companion- 
able but — offensive ! They snub and sympathise in 
a breath, and distinguish themselves in conversation 
by eccentricities of phrase, inflection, and emphasis, 
garnished with a compliment of inexplicable gesture, 
*' most tolerable and not to be endured." 



156 CONCEITED PEOPLE. 

" If Ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." We 
quote reverently, but is not this fallacy, or '' has the 
time given it proof?" Is the bliss of ignorance 
permanent^ and does not the pleasure of wisdom (not 
denied in the assertion of its folly) consist equally in 
the labour and results of its acquisition, exemption 
from both which constitute the bliss of ignorance? 
Without subscribing to this dictum of a philosopher, 
who, however impartial, knew more of the value of 
wisdom than of the pleasures of ignorance, we may 
venture to assert, that whatever of truth there be in 
the hypothesis, it is most especially exemplified in 
the case of a conceited person. His conceit is unques- 
tionably the offspring of " ignorance," and were to 
him the source of '' bliss " inexhaustible, could he but 
abide in the delicious mental darkness unmolested, 
and perpetuate the hallucination of which he is the 
source and the subject without, alas ! becoming its 
victim. Vital conceit is, while it lasts, the most 
independent, the most spiritual, and the most con- 
solatory human frailty that ever assumed the pre- 
rogative of imparting happiness to its votary. It 
is independent of the mortifications which con- 
science and common sense delight to inflict Upon 
pride and infatuation, and of the laws which declare 
the award of admiration, not justified by merit, 



CONCEITED PEOPLE. 157 

to be a prostitution of patronage supplied by the 
social polity for the encouragement of virtue ; it is 
spiritual, for the senses have no connexion with the 
sources of its inspiration — indeed, sensuality is the 
bane of conceit, and your hon-vivant is a humble soul 
compared with the " evangelical peacock" who fasts 
with a false motive ; and it is consolatory, because 
the conceited man carries within his breast a panacea 
which lightens his short afflictions, blunts the edge of 
enmity, and arms him against every shaft from the 
quiver of " outrageous fortune " — excepting the one 
final fatal barbed arrow of detection and contempt. 
Collision may confound, discomfiture may depress, 
scorn may abash, for a moment — but ere the prin- 
ciple of conceit can be radically destroyed, it has an 
elasticity and power of resuscitation without parallel 
in the purely animal economy ; its extinction cannot 
be effected at a blow, it is death-proof until worn out 
by time or service, but in either case it is long-leased, 
and constitutes more than any one attribute of a man, 
his true moral identity. It is all-sufficient as a sub- 
stitute — and here one might almost be tempted to 
regard it as a virtue. The eradication of a bad habit 
is best effected on the principle of barter- — not by 
mere amputation, but upon the more equitable system 
of exchange — replenishing the void left by penitent 



158 CONCEITED PEOPLE. 

abstinence. A conceited man is at no loss for a sub- 
stitute on sucb occasions — lie may forego a delete- 
rious indulgence, and find ample remuneration in bis 
own complacent self-recognition and approval. Con- 
ceit is bis Muse — professional, domestic, and roman- 
tic ; prolific in bis uxorious embrace of joys to bim 
unspeakable, incomparable, and, be falsely bopes, 
interminable. Ennui does not supplant it ; disgust 
at tbe bollowness of tbe world, contempt for its yani- 
ties, tbe pangs of mortal love, tbe wbispers of consci- 
ence, and otber alloys wbicb meeh flesb is beir to, and 
wbicb in otber men operate at times as a sedative to 
tbeir ardour, and suspend at intervals tbe sway of 
passion and tbe very sense of its existence, bave no 
sucb paralysing influence upon tbe conceited man, 
wbose ministering star twinkles for bim continuously 
tbrougb all tbe varieties of temperature, season, and 
circumstance, and, as it were, bolds bis very destiny 
in abeyance unto tbe period of its final consummation. 
Solitude, wbicb to tbe frivolous is deatb, and witb 
tbe sage belps to expound tbe vanity of all tbings, in 
one sense even of wisdom, for bim only vivifies tbe 
introverted current of bis meditation on tbe glorious 
pbenomenon of self. Society, wbere otbers meet witb 
competitions and lessons of bumility, serves only to 
inflame bis self-idolatry ; if an opponent beats bim 



CONCEITED PEOPLE. 159 

in an argument, he falls to a secret disparagement of 
his morals — worsted in a skirmish of wit, he still 
contemns his adversary upon false postulates and 
hypotheses, ever available to his sophistical fancy. 
Success through its medium brings him inordinate 
self-gratulation ; miscarriage finds in it his surest 
alleviation. Combined with the respectability which 
a smack of honour and a modicum of conscience may 
confer, it is almost invincible, but without those 
accessories it more than mitigates the corrosions of 
occasional hopeless emulation. It is a retreat for 
the unconscious imbecile, a sumptuous asylum for 
the pretender, a temporary refuge for the delirious 
outcast. It is not ^' exclusive," though consorting 
chiefly with the corruptible. It is as pernicious to 
the mind as " easy virtue" to the heart. It is an 
amorous misanthropy. Its seat is in the imagina- 
tion, where it reigns supreme, not by destroying the 
other springs of mental action, but by perverting and 
subduing them all unto itself. The illusion, while 
it lasts, is rife of pleasures, which, like those of youth, 
though tainted by folly and succeeded by remorse, 
are not only exquisite in the enjoyment, but leave a 
flavour on the palate which gives them a reversionary 
relish even in the retrospection. But the disen- 
chantment is inevitable, and the wisdom it should 



160 CONCEITED PEOPLE. 

confer is often at best a painful wisdom, and the 
reluctant convert remembers that his " ignorance " 
was *' bliss," and scarcely hopes to discover aught but 
folly in the enlightenment which is at length forced 
upon him. 

Of such are some of the elements of the " bliss " 
of ignorance. 



THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 161 



THE LOED MAYOE'S DINNEE. 

The Lord Mayor and Sheriffs having presented their 
compliments and requested the honour of my com- 
pany to dinner at Guildhall on the Ninth of Novem- 
ber, 18 — , I availed myself with pleasure of the invi- 
tation, and presented myself and my card at the door 
at five o'clock in the evening of that day, and after 
being duly intercepted and inspected by a few vigilant 
individuals, with wands, sashes, and kid gloves, at 
the threshold, was at length permitted to pass the 
barrier which excluded the promiscuous population 
of London from the scene of the approaching festivity. 
Gorgeous was the sight that broke on my aston- 
ished gaze — and strange the feelings awakened by 
the scene ! The old edifice, with its gigantic roof, 
and marble monuments, and stately columns, was 
now illuminated with theatrical brilliancy, — crimson 
drapery of newest manufacture, relieved the cold 
architecture of the walls, — the effigies of departed 
heroes were shaded by silken banners, and this 

M 



162 THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 

ancient municipal temple seemed " for this night 
only " to be tricked out in all the paraphernalia of 
civic jubilee and display. 

At six o'clock a signal was given to the company 
to be seated, and a band of music stationed in a 
gallery erected at the bottom of the hall struck up 
one of its grandest marches, when the pageantry of 
the day closed with a procession round the hall, 
headed by the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, and graced 
by the late Lord Mayor, the aldermen, the chief 
officers of the Corporation, and the distinguished 
visitors invited to the banquet — including her Ma- 
jesty's ministers, the judges, and the foreign ambas- 
sadors, — and each bearing a lady on his arm. The 
distinguished visitors did not talk as they passed, 
and appeared conscious of nothing so much as that 
all eyes were upon them, and that justice would be 
done them according to their respective merits, and 
the particular prejudices of the spectators. Arrived 
at the grand table at the top of the hall, the Lord 
Mayor and his guests took their seats, and prelimi- 
nary formalities being ended, another signal was 
ffiven for dinner to commence. 

The sensation communicated to the company by 
the presence of the great with whom they were for 
the nonce associated, was now succeeded by one of a 



THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 163 

less intellectual character. One universal feeling of 
hunger pervaded the whole assembly. Each had his 
part to play, and was enabled, by that best of quali- 
fications, a good appetite, to play it to perfection. 
One alloy to carnal bliss there certainly was, and 
that -was the unhappy temperature of the turtle, 
which was only indifferently warm! But with this 
single exception everything was good, and every one 
seemed inclined to think so. With vigour and cele- 
rity the citizens now entered on the pleasing avoca- 
tion which had called them together. The band of 
music kept continually playing popular airs, and, 
with the clatter of plates and dishes, the buzz of con- 
versation, and the bustle of the waiters, gave un- 
ceasing animation to the scene. In the centre of the 
hall, over the entrance -door, was a gallery filled with 
strangers, who, it was hoped, had had their dinners ; 
and at the grand end above the principal table was 
another, containing particular friends of the Lord 
Mayor, too poorly or too young to attend the dinner. 
On each side of the hall, upon pedestals, stood two 
men in armour, who from the gra^dty of their deport- 
ment, and the absence of anything like speculation in 
their eyes, were universally understood to be effigies ; 
but, close to them, upon either side, were two round 
tables, standing many feet above the heads of the 



164 THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 

people, on each of which, coyered with a white table- 
cloth, rested a huge family joint of Brobdignag dimen- 
sions, presided over by a respectable-looking indivi- 
dual, in plain clothes, who proved that he was no 
effigy, by keeping continually carving the said family 
joint, with a pertinacity as though he had been 
brought up to it (which he had been), and had sworn 
to go on carving until he came to the end of it, 
truly amazing. 

The " joints " in question were the famous barons of 
beef ; they formed the most substantial ingredient of 
the feast, and the most conspicuous objects in the 
hall ; and the very energetical gentlemen whose hap- 
piness it was to fill the high office of carving them, 
acquitted themselves with credit and eclat Being 
such prominent objects of attention, of course it 
came to the knowledge of every one that those were 
the barons of beef, — and then the ladies and gentle- 
men, curious in culinary lore, and superstitious even 
in such trifles^ fancied that there must be something 
especially appropriate in tasting some of the baron 
— which accordingly they desired to do. One gen- 
tleman, who had ordered a plate of " the baron,'* 
whispered me in confidence, but did not wish it to go 
any further, that he had tasted it in order just to say 
that he had tasted it, but he found it ren/ indifferent ; 



THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 165 

— but others, wlio were less fastidious, managed to 
get through their quantum, by way of laying a foun- 
dation, as they said, for the after courses. 

Smoking turkeys are put upon the tables, and 
people wish they had not taken the baron. Pheasants 
follow, and then partridges and pullets, and comesti- 
bles of all and every seasonable variety. The cham- 
pagne is now made to fly, and careless gentlemen 
pretend they can't find their wine-glasses, and so, to 
save time, offer to take theirs in tumblers. Here 
and there, perhaps, delicate-looking persons may re- 
fuse to partake of the sparkling beverage, declaring 
they would rather " stick to their sherry," — but 
there is little resisting the vortex of such conviviality 
as that of the Lord Mayor's Dinner — the waiter, 
having no time to lose, seems to threaten to fill your 
glass or pour the wine into your lap, so take it you 
must, the music seems to send it down, and the 
gentle exhilaration it conveys obliterates all power 
of remorse. One gentleman, more strongly excited 
than the rest, somehow seems always to have a bottle 
of champagne in his hand ; two or three of his 
neighbours remark that they have seen him challenge 
at least as many as thirty people already ; — a watch 
is set on him — and the mystery is at length revealed ; 
he had brought his o^vs champagne! — though how 



166 THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 

he got it in, and how he managed it altogether, and 
where the dickens he stows it, nobody can divine. 

The noise now increases. Bashful swains — some 
such there always will be, even at the best regulated 
festivals — who were once too modest to enter into 
conversation, now begin to quiz and declare their 
hidden opinions upon things in general. Ladies, 
who at the first stood upon their ^' gentility," smiled 
courteously, but with dignified reserve, and if a vul- 
gar deputy happened to wink his eye at the turtle, or 
rub his hands at the approach of a savoury dish, turned 
their heads awry — now begin to laugh loud, and ask 
questions of anybody and everybody. The gentleman 
with the private champagne takes wine with the 
folks all over again, and every one begins to say what 
he likes and *ask for whatever he fancies. One spe- 
cimen of modesty, who at first was satisfied with any- 
thing he could get, actually had the audacity to half 
lift a leveret out of a dish, and giving him a box of 
the ears, vented an abusive epithet and dismissed the 
poor inanimate object with savage contempt. Others 
preserved a calmness in their enjoyment ; one con- 
templative character there was with his cuffs turned 
up, his napkin fastened through his coat button-hole, 
and one elbow resting in a Selim curry, sitting with 
his waistcoat half thro^vn open, and looking as much 



THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 167 

as to say, " Mortal tliat I am, I can eat no more !" 
Tlie private champagne gentleman, having (as he 
acknowledged to me) several bottles yet unopened, 
now could not contain himself, but he must take wine 
with all the stewards ! He had conceived the idea, 
and he had made the resolve, and nothing seemed 
likely to dissuade him from his bent. He fixed his 
wild eyes upon one of those august functionaries, 
made several ineffectual attempts to bring him to a 
tete-a-tete^ called him by his name, beckoned to him 
as he passed, and tried to catch hold of his wand, — 
but all to no purpose. At length he succeeded in 
laying hold of the official gentleman's coat-tail, and^ 
the more the steward resented the indignity, the 
more the champagne gentleman held him tight and 
wouldn't let him go. Finding himself thus enthralled, 
and that he had no alternative but to comply, he 
yielded to his fate and consented to exchange the 
civilities required ; 4he potation was quaffed, and his 
tormentor released him — when he was in a moment 
lost amid the crowd, and never showed his face in the 
same vicinity again. 

The choristers above now chant forth " Non ISTobis 
Domine," and the company stand up to listen to it 
and look about them. What the effect of those 
" solemn sweeping concords " may have been upon 



168 THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 

the sensibilities of the multitude present might be 
an interesting theme for speculation, but for which 
there is no time just now. They behaved very well 
upon the whole, and some of the worthy corporators 
put on their spectacles to look at the singers. 

Now come the pines. It would not be fitting to 
charge the citizens with sensuality, but they un- 
doubtedly have (as an '^ honourable member " near 
me phrased it), males and females of both sexes, an 
extraordinary penchant for pines. As the affrighted 
waiter pours them upon the table, they are seized 
with convulsive rapacity ; '' appetite grows by what 
' it feeds on," and then calls for more ; choruses of 
pretexts are raised for a fresh supply — all the last 
of course, were bad ones, or they hadn't had any at 
all. The steward is appealed to, — and one requisi- 
tionist, whose heart was in the cause, was seen to 
endeavour to propitiate that dignity by offering him 
an apple as a bribe. The latter seemed anxious to 
excuse himself and set himself right with the disap- 
pointed gentleman, whom he knew and esteemed, by 
entering confidentially with him into a full and sta- 
tistical explanation as to how ver?/ delicately he was 
circumstanced as regarded the pines, for that he as 
well as his fellow-stewards had had so many at his 
disposal and no more — that they really had been 



THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 169 

equally, and he believed equitably, distributed ; and 
that, if it came to that, he was not in a situation to 
ask public favours of the committee, or private ones 
of the members of it — and, finally, that if there was 
any one thing more than another that the committee 
were particular about, it was the pines ; it would 
have delighted him to have served so old a friend, 
but so it was — and the apple he begged to decline. 
Then there were sundry laughs against the poor 
gentleman ; one told him not to pine away, another 
that it was a fruitless attempt, and another that he 
thought he had better cut the pines altogether. 

And thus they went on, " ab ovo usque ad mala^'' 
from the baron to the pines, until at last the trum- 
peters, who had been standing three abreast at each 
end of the hall, maintaining an inflexible silence, but 
looking as though they were quite prepared to make 
a noise when properly called upon to do so, on a 
signal being given by IVIr. Toole, the toastmaster, 
blew a blast which reverberated through the great 
hall ; and then Mr. Toole the toastmaster gave out, 
in his most (some one said) senatorian accents, and in 
language which the youngest of the Lord Mayor's 
children in the gallery might understand, that the 
Lord Mayor w^as about to drink from the loving cup 
to the health of the citizens, and that he bade them 



170 THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 

all a hearty welcome ! Whereupon the welcome is 
acknowledged by the company, not in words, hut in 
deeds, and they fall to the carousal again as if nothing 
had happened, and they were only just beginning. 
Trumpets again — Mr. Toole again — and the fact is, 
through those infallible media, promulgated, that 
the health of her Majesty the Queen is proposed. It 
is drunk with enthusiasm. The citizens now begin 
to feel political. Sir Robert Peel is called up, and 
delivers a speech replete with proprieties and match- 
less elocution. Toole, it was thought, looked a little 
jealous at him, until the minister moderated the 
vehemence of his tones in order to play off a plea- 
santry upon the Corporation touching the question 
of provisions under the new tariff, at which Toole, 
and, indeed, everybody in the hall excepting the men 
in armour and the overgrown boguies at the western 
end, " laughed consumedly." Mendacious young 
men leave their seats, and try to work their way up 
the hall. They take a favourable standing position 
for hearing what is going on, but their tenure is a 
short one, and they are driven away by loud hints 
about irregularity, smothered complaints that the 
view is obstructed, and, in the last resort, pathetic 
appeals to their feelings as gentlemen, utterly irre- 
sistible. The discomfited expectants therefore take 



THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 171 

refuge and array tliemselves in the aisle that crosses 
the hall, and await with impatience the withdrawal 
of the ladies, when their vacant places are to be dis- 
posable. Some of them flock round the little gate — 

*' The ivory gate that leads behind the scenes — 

at which one of the gayest-looking of the stewards 
is stationed, and invested with the painful duty of 
confronting the importunity of the applicants for 
admission on the hustings. The waiters are now 
about to retire, and, having done their office, to 

*' Receive money for their pains ; '' 

and each, as he passes the ivory gate, has to sustain 
the scrutinising glance of the steward, who, probably, 
knowing the heart of man, surveys him with Cassius- 
like severity, muttering troublously, as he escapes, 
something between a hope and a disbelief, that not 
one of them has been so detestably base as to defraud 
the CorjD oration of any of their pines. 

The ladies retire and a rush succeeds. The vacant 
seats are taken without ceremony, and in a few 
moments the appearance of the tables, as far at least 
as the company is concerned, is singularly changed. 
Admirals and tailors, orators and glaziers, ambassa- 
dors and pawnbrokers, are now huddled cheek by 



172 THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 

jowl together ; no man knows his neighbour, and, 
therefore, all confidence being at an end, each is 
satisfied with obserying the proceedings and the 
aspect of the company around him. The Lord 
Mayor, of course, was the chief attraction — and who 
could fail in identifying him^ with his rubicund face 
and portly presence, betokening the life and soul 
of magisterial hospitality? Mr. Hopkins, indeed, 
is the beau-ideal of a Lord Mayor, the very glass of 
corpulency, and the mould of civic grace. Unabashed 
by the aristocracy of his courtier guests, and unre- 
strained by any affected sense of his own unworthi- 
ness, " open to all parties, and influenced by none," 
he acquitted himself with a felicity which has rarely, 
if ever, been equalled. On his right hand sat, first, 
the late Lord Mayor, in appearance the very anti- 
thesis of his bluff and benign-looking successor ; then 
the ministers, apparently engaged in thought and 
careless observation ; and then the aldermen, who, 
having said all their good things to the foreign am- 
bassadors who did not understand them, and ex- 
hausted all their arts in attempting to revive the 
sensation created hours ago by their first appearance 
among the constables in the lobby, were seated with 
a restlessness and oppressed look of resignation not 
altogether characteristic of their order. A line of 



THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 173 

judges graced the left-hand table, and beyond them 
a file of military officers, who seemed to enjoy their 
claret, and were not disposed to quarrel about the 
pines. In course of time the " exclusives " became 
reconciled to their new neighbours, and starch decorum 
gave place to sociability and noise. Then was it 
found that the Bacchanalian influences had not been 
confined to the humbler circles, — for there was Sir 
Jeremy Lawson (an exception to the general aspect of 
his brethren) making ten people laugh at once ; and 
Mr. Harper cracking nuts and jokes alternately with 
a small party of pundits ; and the police commissioner, 
for the amusement of the bigwigs, torturing a fine- 
looking man with a disquisition which, from the per- 
plexed look of the latter, probably was too abstruse 
or too refined for his comprehension ; there was one 
of the Sheriffs telling the drollest anecdotes of his 
early career — and the other quoting epigrams from 
the Charivari ; and here and there might be seen 
strange fantastic figures, bedizened with all the ela- 
boration of a gala dandy — one laying down the law 
in bad English to a subaltern ; another trying to feel 
at home with a savant; and a third, with a look like 
an excited spectre, and one leg hanging over the 
side of his chair, appeared to be chuckling at some 



174 THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 

" bodiless creation " in the third heavens, upon which 
his eyes were fixed with feverish ecstasy. 

The speeches proceeded ; and Lord John Eussell, 
who sat below the judges, returned thanks for the 
city members, and was vociferously cheered by his 
admirers. The Lord Chief Justice, who looked, as 
usual, handsome and irritable, returned thanks for 
his health in a neat and short speech, while the 
Eecorder, an officer of the Corporation, on the con- 
trary, thought proper to say a very great deal, and 
to feel strongly on the occasion. Sir Frederick 
Pollock spoke and looked as an Attorney- General 
ought to speak and look ; and the late Lord Mayor, 
in returning thanks for the health of the late Lady 
Mayoress, said that it ill became a man to praise his 
own wife — she was a Peri, and that w^as all he should 
say for her. 

The Lord Mayor rises, and the company follow 
him to the Council chamber. A new era commences. 
If the mixture of grades w^as great after the disap- 
pearance of the ladies from the dinner-table, what 
was it now J when the citizens w^ere no longer obliged, 
like good boys, to sit quiet in their places, but were 
at liberty to lounge about at will, and seek out every 
imaginable object of admiration? There were all 



THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 175 

the ladies, seated like legislators on tlie public 
benclies — and oli ! the humour and the unction with 
which the worthy members of the court criticised 
and saluted, and otherwise deported themselyes be- 
fore the fair senators in i^^common council assembled ! 
What imaginations were rife with the conception of 
the indescribable and electrifying effects that would 
be produced if the ladies were to have a public 
debate, and start a discussion upon the income-tax 
in the presence of its illustrious author ! Due it is 
to the Lord Mayor here to state, that, foreseeing 
the inconvenience, though perfectly alive to the 
humour of such an exhibition, he wisely abstained 
from giving any encouragement to such a proceeding, 
and with that view denied himself the gratification 
of sending a card of invitation to his particular friend 
Miss Mary Anne Walker. And so with very good 
taste, in place of politics, the Lady Mayoress pro- 
posed a quadrille, and the Lord Mayor, smoothing 
his warm face (for the heat was oppressive) with a 
white cambric, said he had no objection. The mul- 
titude increases, and the Council chamber is now 
filled (emblematically enough) almost to bursting. 
Nevertheless a quadrille they will have. The select 
few who happen to be so peculiarly constituted as to 
wear cloaks in the dog-days, or practise gymnastics in 



1 



176 THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 

a hot-house, now stand up. Being curious to have a 
sight of the individuals who, in the absence of any- 
thing in the shape of ventilation, could face the 
ordeal through such an atmosphere, I advanced to 
the centre of the room, and found that the Terpsi- 
chorean fatuity was not confined to the juveniles 
alone, for, as if to confound the evidence of my 
senses, who^ should I behold figuring in L^Ete but 
the venerable city solicitor ; and upon penetrating 
farther through the hot fog which enveloped the 
mystic maze, my bewildered vision was met by the 
imposing aspect of Mr. John Martineau, whisking 
through the Pastorale ! It is not said disrespectfully, 
but the revered member of '' the House " does not do 
the Pastorale well. The young ladies are now on the 
tip-toe of expectation that some one of the distin- 
guished foreigners or natives will come and suppli- 
cate the honour of their hands ; and Mr. Deputy 
Daffodil's son — with a deal of embroidery for his 
years, glazed boots as tight as ever he can bear 
them, and all with a three-and-sixpenny pair of 
gloves, and an opera hat! — makes sundry vain 
strides after the object of his affections, but she is 
invariably snapped up by an Excellency or a member 
of Parliament before Mr. Deputy's son can say Jack 
Eobinson ; and then when she is really disengaged, 



THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 177 

coolly tells him that her aunt Isabella (or " aunt 
TFf^abella ") won't allow her to dance any more. 

The true spirit of hilarity is now in the ascendant. 
The aldermen get more lively — the flow of soul is 
now succeeding to the feast, and the yital fluid runs 

'* Tickling up and down men's veins, 
Making that idiot laughter move their eyes, 
And stir their cheeks to idle merriment.'' 

Some one said he declared he saw Lord Stanley poke 
Lord John in the ribs ; and Sir Eobert Peel, as he 
sijDped his coffee, would keep making the Lord Mayor 
split his sides over again with his facetise about 
duties and provisions. The judges looked jolly, and 
bantered one another as they use to do of yore at 
those daily dinners where one bottle served for a 
mess of four, and they thought judges in tteir wigs 
looked very much like foguies. The militaires re- 
laxed their conventional rigidity, and moved about 
with civil ease. There was Mr. Joseph Hume trying 
to explain a conundrum with his fingers to ]\L*. 
Home Home, who would keep talking and laugh- 
ing about the Times Testimonial. Whist-players who 
do love a rubber better than anything else in this 
world next to their relations, sport 2ijeu d esprit upon 
every picture-card, and hum vivacious cadences 

N 



178 THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 

between tke deals. Quondam members of the Cor- 
poration, who had not been among their old compeers 
for many a day, are recognised and greeted with 
vociferous delight. Some there were of a more 
serious cast, looking like wiseacres, and speaking 
their minds (in vino Veritas) to their bitterest ene- 
mies. Candidates for livings, lectureships, master- 
ships, pleaderships, and commissionerships, were 
making the most of their opportunity, and throwing 
themselves continually in the way of their expected 
patrons. Shopkeepers were seen playing the bashaw, 
carpenters parading about with swords, and hosiers 
with black-silk stockings for all the world like 
Hamlet Prince of Denmark. 

A small clique of stedfast whigs hold a little face- 
tious council in a corner, and vent innumerable sar- 
casms in an under-tone, touching the demeanour of 
Lord John, and the indications manifested of late 
tending to prove the hoUowness of that statesman's 
political professions. Some avowed that their faith 
in him was gone, and gloried in not having sat near 
him at dinner, and thereby been compelled to take 
wine with his lordship. The loudest of the con- 
federates, it appears, had been accommodated at 
dinner at the lower end of the hall, from whence, as 
Lord John must from physical causes have been 



THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 179 

almost iimsible, tlie angiy gentleman, not having 
bronglit an opera glass, must have enjoyed the addi- 
tional pm-ilege of not being annoyed even with a 
sight of the noble offender. Sharp discussions wonld 
spring up on all sides about the sliding scale and the 
new alderman, and Cabool and the Tower ditch, and 
the political purity and worthiness or otherwise of 
one and all, severally and collectively, of the very 
admirable or very abominable of the individuals 
present, who, exercising the superior energies be- 
stowed upon them by nature, had, in the regular 
course of things, raised themselves above the herd, 
and invoked the malignity of cackling critics by 
rendering public service to their fellow-creatm-es. 

S}Tiipathetic worthies, with ferret eyes, who seemed 
to love everything with lachrymose affection, toddled 
about, dispensing their benedictions, and weeping 
tears almost of blood, as if their very heart had burst 
with philanthropy and joy. 

One furious gentleman, looking very much like a 
genius, darted into the tea-room, flashing and foam- 
ing with ire. He had been insulted ! — grossly 
insulted ! — no words could describe his wrath — no 
vengeance could appease it. It appeared, from the 
agitated gentleman's own account of himself, that he 
was devoted to the arts, and had thought fit, during 



180 THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 

dinner, to express his admiration of some piece of 
mural ornament on which the figure of a horse was 
sculptured, in the hall. His neighbour, to whom he 
had addressed himself, opined that the said horse 
was had about the knees ; this the dilettante denied ; 
whereupon, without giving him any notice, the dis- 
sentient, in the complainant's own language, " up'd 
with his hand and rubbed my countenance, and said, 
' what do you know about horses ? ' " Fortunately, it 
was the Lord Mayor's dinner ; — if it had not been, 
he must — yes, he must have struck him ; but under 
the peculiar circumstances, he contented himself \vith 
taking the individual's likeness, in order that he 
might be able to identify him on some future oppor- 
tunity, and in the meantime he peremptorily denied 
that the gentleman was a gentleman. This was a 
climax. There could be nothing worth staying for 
after this. In seeking the room where I had depo- 
sited my cloak, I mistook the apartment, and entered 
an adjoining one, in which some livery servants were 
pledging each other in copious libations. The under 
waiters were assembled round a fire, calumniating the 
waiters with the red collars ; while the latter fra- 
ternity, as one man, protested with a ferocity posi- 
tively fearful against the monopoly so long held by Mr. 
Toole the toastmaster, one of them insinuating un- 



THE LORD mayor's DINNER. 181 

worthy suspicions as to the real cause of that eminent 
functionary's face being so very red, and another 
(with wool in his ears) going so far as to assert that 
Mr. Toole had seen his best day, and that his voice, 
at all events, had not improved no more nor his com- 
plexion. 

Passing through the hall again on my way out, I 
recognised two or three of my dining acquaintances, 
and amongst them the private champagne gentleman, 
with a bottle in one hand, a glass in the other, a lady 
in each eye, and his soul in elysium. I felt some- 
what inclined to loiter awhile with this indefatigable 
wassailer, and observe the antics of an original mind 
in its undress, or, to speak more technically, under 
disguise — but '•^ night's wheels were rattling onward," 
— and I took my departure, infinitely gratified with 
my entertainment at The Lord Mayor's Dinner. 



London :— Printed by G. Barclay, Castle St. Leicester Sq. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 152 780 # 



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